Direct connection between Mott insulators and d-wave high-temperature superconductors revealed by continuous evolution of self-energy poles

Abstract

The high-temperature superconductivity in copper oxides emerges when carriers are doped into the parent Mott insulator. This well-established fact has, however, eluded a microscopic explanation. Here we show that the missing link is the self-energy pole in the energy-momentum space. Its continuous evolution with doping directly connects the Mott insulator and high-temperature superconductivity. We show this by numerically studying the extremely small doping region close to the Mott insulating phase in a standard model for cuprates, the two-dimensional Hubbard model. We first identify two relevant self-energy structures in the Mott insulator: the pole generating the Mott gap and a relatively broad peak generating the so-called waterfall structure, which is another consequence of strong correlations present in the Mott insulator. We next reveal that either the Mott-gap pole or the waterfall structure (the feature at the energy closer to the Fermi level) directly transforms itself into another self-energy pole at the same energy and momentum when the system is doped with carriers. The anomalous self-energy yielding the superconductivity is simultaneously born exactly at this energy-momentum point. Thus created self-energy pole, interpreted as arising from a hidden fermionic excitation, continuously evolves upon further doping and considerably enhances the superconductivity. Above the critical temperature, the same self-energy pole generates a pseudogap in the normal state. We thus elucidate a unified Mott-physics mechanism, where the self-energy structure inherent to the Mott insulator directly gives birth to both the high critical superconducting temperature and pseudogap.

Source-reported materials — not catalogue approval

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