Transport and Optical Conductivity in the Hubbard Model: A High-Temperature Expansion Perspective

TL;DR

This paper derives analytical high-temperature series expansion expressions for the Hubbard model's spectral functions and optical conductivity, comparing with numerical results and revealing key transport behaviors in the bad-metal regime.

Contribution

It introduces a moment-reconstruction method for spectral functions and conductivity in the Hubbard model at high temperatures, including the infinite-dimensional limit, with validation against numerical methods.

Findings

Spectral functions and conductivity are smooth and featureless at high T.

Resistivity increases linearly with T without saturation.

The conductivity approximately scales as (1-n) times the n=0 conductivity.

Abstract

We derive analytical expressions for the spectral moments of the dynamical response functions of the Hubbard model using the high-temperature series expansion. We consider generic dimension $d$ as well as the infinite-$d$ limit, arbitrary electron density $n$, and both finite and infinite repulsion $U$. We use moment-reconstruction methods to obtain the one-electron spectral function, the self-energy, and the optical conductivity. They are all smooth functions at high-temperature and, at large-$U$, they are featureless with characteristic widths of order the lattice hopping parameter $t$. In the infinite-$d$ limit we compare the series expansion results with accurate numerical renormalization group and interaction expansion quantum Monte-Carlo results. We find excellent agreement down to surprisingly low temperatures, throughout most of the bad-metal regime which applies for $T \gtrsim (1-n)D$, the Brinkman-Rice scale. The resistivity increases linearly in $T$ at high-temperature without saturation. This results from the $1/T$ behaviour of the compressibility or kinetic energy, which play the role of the effective carrier number. In contrast, the scattering time (or diffusion constant) saturate at high-$T$. We find that $\sigma(n,T) \approx (1-n)\sigma(n=0,T)$ to a very good approximation for all $n$, with $\sigma(n=0,T)\propto t/T$ at high temperatures. The saturation at small $n$ occurs due to a compensation between the density-dependence of the effective number of carriers and that of the scattering time. The $T$-dependence of the resistivity displays a knee-like feature which signals a cross-over to the intermediate-temperature regime where the diffusion constant (or scattering time) start increasing with decreasing $T$. At high-temperatures, the thermopower obeys the Heikes formula, while the Wiedemann-Franz law is violated with the Lorenz number vanishing as $1/T^2$.