English

Type II t-J model and shared antiferromagnetic spin coupling from Hund's rule in superconducting La$_3$Ni$_2$O$_7$

Strongly Correlated Electrons 2023-11-28 v3 Superconductivity

Abstract

Recently, a 80 K superconductor was discovered in La3_3Ni2_2O7_7 under high pressure. Density function theory (DFT) calculations identify dx2y2d_{x^2-y^2}, dz2d_{z^2} as the active orbitals on the bilayer square lattice with a d8xd^{8-x} configuration of of Ni per site. One naive expectation is to describe this system in terms of a two-orbital t-J model. However, we emphasize the importance of Hund's coupling JHJ_H and the x=0x=0 limit should be viewed as a spin-one Mott insulator. Especially, the significant Hund's coupling shares the inter-layer super-exchange JJ_\perp of the dz2d_{z^2} orbital to the dx2y2d_{x^2-y^2} orbital, an effect that cannot be captured by conventional perturbation or mean-field approaches. In this study, we first explore the limit where the dz2d_{z^2} orbital is Mott localized, dealing with a one-orbital bilayer t-J model focused on the dx2y2d_{x^2-y^2} orbital. Notably, we find that strong inter-layer pairing survives up to x=0.5x=0.5 hole doping driven by the transmitted JJ_\perp, which explains the existence of a high Tc superconductor in the experiment at this doping level. Next, we uncover the more realistic situation where the dz2d_{z^2} orbital is slightly hole-doped and cannot be simply integrated out. We take the JH+J_H\rightarrow +\infty limit and propose a type II t-J model with four \textit{spin-half} singlon (d7d^7) states and three \textit{spin-one} doublon (d8d^8) states. Employing a parton mean-field approach, we recover similar results as in the one-orbital t-J model, but now with the effect of the JJ_\perp automatically generated. We propose future experiments to electron dope the system to further enhance TcT_c.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2307.15706,
  title  = {Type II t-J model and shared antiferromagnetic spin coupling from Hund's rule in superconducting La$_3$Ni$_2$O$_7$},
  author = {Hanbit Oh and Ya-Hui Zhang},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2307.15706},
  year   = {2023}
}

Comments

5+4 pages, 4+2 figures