English

S-wave pairing in a two-orbital t-J model on triangular lattice: possible application to Pb$_{10-x}$Cu$_x$(PO$_4$)$_6$O

Superconductivity 2023-08-07 v1

Abstract

Recently room temperature superconductor was claimed in Pb10x_{10-x}Cux_x(PO4_4)6_6O (also known as LK-99) with x(0.9,1.1)x\in (0.9,1.1). Density functional theory (DFT) calculations suggest that the conduction electrons are from the doped Cu atoms with valence close to d9d^{9}. Motivated by this picture, we build a two-orbital Hubbard model on a triangular lattice formed by the dxzd_{xz} and dyzd_{yz} orbitals with total hole density (summed over spin and orbital) n=1pn=1-p. When p=0p=0, the system is in a Mott insulator within this model. When p>0p>0, we derive a tJt-J model and perform a self-consistent slave boson mean field calculation. Interestingly we find a s-wave pairing in contrast to the one-orbital t-J model which favors d+idd+id pairing. S wave pairing should be more robust to disorder and may lead to high Tc superconductor with sufficiently large values of tt and JJ. However, the DFT calculations predict a very small value of tt and then the TcT_c is expected to be small. If LK99 is really a high Tc superconductor, ingredients beyond the current model are needed. We conjecture that the doped Cu atoms may distort the original lattice and form local clusters with smaller Cu -Cu distance and thus larger values of tt and JJ. Within these clusters, we may locally apply our t-J model calculation and expect high Tc s-wave superconductor. Then the superconducting islands couple together, which may eventually become a global superconductor, an insulator or even an anomalous metal depending on sample details.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2308.02469,
  title  = {S-wave pairing in a two-orbital t-J model on triangular lattice: possible application to Pb$_{10-x}$Cu$_x$(PO$_4$)$_6$O},
  author = {Hanbit Oh and Ya-Hui Zhang},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2308.02469},
  year   = {2023}
}

Comments

6 pages, 2 figures