Hunpyo Lee

Absence of Metallicity in K-doped Picene: Importance of Electronic Correlations

Potassium-doped picene (K(x)picene) has recently been reported to be a superconductor at x=3 with critical temperatures up to 18 K. Here we study the electronic structure of K-doped picene films by photoelectron spectroscopy and ab initio density functional theory combined with dynamical mean-field theory (DFT+DMFT). Experimentally we observe that, except for spurious spectral weight due to the lack of a homogeneous chemical potential at low K concentrations (x≈1), the spectra always display a finite energy gap. This result is supported by our DFT+DMFT calculations which provide clear evidence that K(x)picene is a Mott insulator for integer doping concentrations x=1, 2, and 3. We discuss various scenarios to understand the discrepancies with previous reports of superconductivity and metallic behavior.

Ab initiostudy of the two-dimensional metallic state at the surface of SrTiO3: Importance of oxygen vacancies

Motivated by recent angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) observations of a highly metallic two-dimensional electron gas (2DEG) at the (001) vacuum-cleaved surface of SrTiO3 and the subsequent discussion on the possible role of oxygen vacancies for the appearance of such a state (Ref 1), we analyze by means of density functional theory (DFT) the electronic structure of various oxygen-deficient SrTiO3 surface slabs. We find a significant surface reconstruction after introducing oxygen vacancies and we show that the charges resulting from surface-localized oxygen vacancies --independently of the oxygen concentration-- redistribute in the surface region and deplete rapidly within a few layers from the surface suggesting the formation of a 2DEG. We discuss the underlying model emerging from such observations.

Theoretical prediction of a strongly correlated Dirac metal

Recently, the most intensely studied objects in the electronic theory of solids have been strongly correlated systems and graphene. However, the fact that the Dirac bands in graphene are made up of sp(2) electrons, which are subject to neither strong Hubbard repulsion U nor strong Hunds rule coupling J, creates certain limitations in terms of novel, interaction-induced physics that could be derived from Dirac points. Here we propose GaCu3(OH)6Cl2 (Ga-substituted herbertsmithite) as a correlated Dirac-Kagome metal combining Dirac electrons, strong interactions and frustrated magnetic interactions. Using density functional theory, we calculate its crystallographic and electronic properties, and observe that it has symmetry-protected Dirac points at the Fermi level. Its many-body physics is diverse, with possible charge, magnetic and superconducting instabilities. Through a combination of various many-body methods we study possible symmetry-lowering phase transitions such as Mott-Hubbard, charge or magnetic ordering, and unconventional superconductivity, which in this compound assumes an f-wave symmetry.

General mechanism for orbital selective phase transitions

Based on the analysis of a two-orbital Hubbard model within a mean-field approach, we propose a mechanism for an orbital selective phase transition (OSPT) where coexistence of localized and itinerant electrons can be realized. We show that this OSPT exists both at and near half filling even in the absence of crystal field splittings or when bandwidths, orbital degeneracies and magnetic states are equal for both orbitals provided the orbitals have different band dispersions. Such conditions should be generally satisfied in many materials. We find that this OSPT is not sensitive to the strength of Hunds rule coupling and that heavy doping favors the collinear antiferromagnetic state over the OSPT. We discuss our results in relation to the iron pnictides.

Possible origin of the reduced ordered magnetic moment in iron pnictides: A dynamical mean-field theory study

We investigate the phase diagram of a two-band frustrated Hubbard model in the framework of dynamical mean field theory. While a first-order phase transition occurs from a paramagnetic (PM) metal to an antiferromagnetic (AF) insulator when both bands are equally frustrated, an intermediate AF metallic phase appears in each band at different

Dynamical cluster approximation study of the anisotropic two-orbital Hubbard model.

U_c

Mott correlated states in the underdoped two-dimensional Hubbard model: Variational Monte Carlo versus a dynamical cluster approximation

values if only one of the two bands is frustrated, resulting in continuous orbital-selective phase transitions from PM metal to AF metal and AF metal to AF insulator. We argue that such intermediate phases are possibly related to the puzzling AF metallic state with small magnetization observed in undoped iron-pnictide superconductors as well as to the pseudogap features observed in optical experiments.

Dynamical cluster approximation within an augmented plane wave framework: Spectral properties of SrVO3

We investigate the properties of a two-orbital Hubbard model with unequal bandwidths on the square lattice in the framework of the dynamical cluster approximation (DCA) combined with a continuous-time quantum Monte Carlo algorithm. We explore the effect of short-range spatial fluctuations on the nature of the metal-insulator transition and the possible occurrence of an orbital-selective Mott transition (OSMT) as a function of cluster size N{c}. We observe that for N{c}=2 no OSMT is present, instead a band insulator state for both orbitals is stabilized at low temperatures due to the appearance of an artificial local ordered state. For N{c}=4 the DCA calculations suggest the presence of five different phases which originate out of the cooperation and competition between spatial fluctuations and orbitals of different bandwidths and an OSMT phase is stabilized. Based on our results, we discuss the nature of the gap opening.

Determination of the lattice susceptibility within the dual fermion method

We investigate the properties of the frustrated underdoped Hubbard model on the square lattice using two complementary approaches, i.e., the dynamical cluster extension of the dynamical mean-field theory and the variational Monte Carlo simulations of Gutzwiller-Jastrow wave functions with backflow corrections. We compare and discuss data for the energy and the double occupancies, as obtained from both approaches. At small dopings, we observe a rapid crossover from a weakly correlated metal at low interaction strength U to a non-Fermi-liquid correlated state with strong local spin correlations. Furthermore, we investigate the stability of the correlated state against phase separation. We observe phase separation only for large values of U or very large frustration. No phase separation is present for the parameter range relevant for the cuprates. DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevB.87.045111

Superfluid-insulator transition of the Josephson-junction array model with commensurate frustration

We present a combination of local density approximation (LDA) with the dynamical cluster approximation (LDA+DCA) in the framework of the full-potential linear augmented plane-wave method, and compare our LDA+DCA results for SrVO