Strange diffusivity of incoherent metal in half-filled two-dimensional Hubbard model
Abstract
We study charge transport across the metal-insulator crossover in the half-filled two-dimensional Hubbard model, with particular emphasis on precision control. The dynamic current-current correlation function is obtained directly in the thermodynamic limit, and the optical conductivity is extracted using numerical analytic continuation. To achieve this, we develop a multiscale approach: the non-perturbative low-frequency behavior is computed using the unbiased diagrammatic Monte Carlo technique, while the high-frequency physics is captured via a self-consistent (semi-)analytic diagrammatic theory. We found that across a broad temperature range where the DC resistivity displays anomalous scaling, with , the Nernst-Einstein relation implies the diffusion constant with the characteristic "strange metal" behavior. It was also revealed that the insulating regime is entered through a peculiar non-Fermi liquid state-which we call a Pseudogap Metal-characterized by insulating charge compressibility coexisting with metallic transport. Diagrammatically, the high-temperature incoherent transport is captured by the dressed polarization bubble, whereas near the metal-insulator crossover, the effective interaction vertex between opposite-spin particles is responsible for transferring the Drude weight to a high-frequency continuum.
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Cite
@article{arxiv.2509.00281,
title = {Strange diffusivity of incoherent metal in half-filled two-dimensional Hubbard model},
author = {Youngmin Eom and Igor S. Tupitsyn and Nikolay V. Prokof'ev and Boris Svistunov and Evgeny Kozik and Aaram J. Kim},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2509.00281},
year = {2025}
}
Comments
14 pages, 12 figures