Rotationally-invariant slave-bosons for Strongly Correlated Superconductors

TL;DR

This paper extends the slave-boson method to study superconductivity in strongly correlated systems, enabling analysis of the interplay between correlations and pairing mechanisms near Mott transitions.

Contribution

It introduces a rotationally-invariant slave-boson formalism for superconducting states, applied to multi-orbital Hubbard models with strong correlations.

Findings

Method captures the physics of strongly correlated superconductivity.

Proximity to Mott transition favors superconductivity.

Applicable to multi-orbital systems with interorbital interactions.

Abstract

We extend the rotationally invariant formulation of the slave-boson method to superconducting states. This generalization, building on the recent work by Lechermann et al. [Phys. Rev. B {\bf 76}, 155102 (2007)], allows to study superconductivity in strongly correlated systems. We apply the formalism to a specific case of strongly correlated superconductivity, as that found in a multi-orbital Hubbard model for alkali-doped fullerides, where the superconducting pairing has phonic origin, yet it has been shown to be favored by strong correlation owing to the symmetry of the interaction. The method allows to treat on the same footing the strong correlation effects and the interorbital interactions driving superconductivity, and to capture the physics of strongly correlated superconductivity, in which the proximity to a Mott transition favors the superconducting phenomenon.