Superconductivity studied by solving ab initio low-energy effective Hamiltonians for carrier doped CaCuO$_2$, Bi$_2$Sr$_2$CuO$_6$, Bi$_2$Sr$_2$CaCu$_2$O$_8$, and HgBa$_2$CuO$_4$

TL;DR

This study uses ab initio effective Hamiltonians and variational Monte Carlo to analyze superconductivity in various cuprates, revealing universal mechanisms and dependencies that could guide the design of higher-temperature superconductors.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive ab initio approach combined with variational Monte Carlo to elucidate the universal superconducting mechanism in cuprates, linking $T_c^{ m opt}$ to fundamental Hamiltonian parameters.

Findings

Ground state is predominantly superconducting but competes with stripe and antiferromagnetic states.

Superconducting order parameter correlates with experimental superfluid density and gap measurements.

Universal scaling law: $T_c^{ m opt} o 0.16 |t_1| F_{SC}$.

Abstract

We numerically analyze superconductivity (SC) in the cuprate superconductors by using ab initio effective Hamiltonians consisting of the antibonding combination of Cu $3d_{x^2-y^2}$ and O $2p_{\sigma}$ orbitals. We perform variational Monte Carlo calculations for the four carrier doped cuprates with diverse experimental optimal SC critical temperature $T_{c}^{\rm opt}$: CaCuO$_2$ ($T_{c}^{\rm opt} \sim 110$ K), Bi$_2$Sr$_2$CuO$_6$ ($T_{c}^{\rm opt} \sim 10$-$40$ K), Bi$_2$Sr$_2$CaCu$_2$O$_8$ ($T_{c}^{\rm opt} \sim 85$-$100$ K), and HgBa$_2$CuO$_4$ ($T_{c}^{\rm opt} \sim 90$ K). Materials and hole doping concentration ($\delta$) dependencies of the SC order parameter $F_{\rm SC}$ and the competition with spin/charge order show essential and quantitative agreements with the available experiments in the following points: (1) The ground state is commonly the SC state, which is severely competing with the charge/spin stripe and antiferromagnetic states. (2) $F_{\rm SC}$ shows amplitude consistent with the superfluid density measured in the muon spin resonance and its dome structure found in $\delta$ dependence shows consistency with that of the SC gap in the tunneling and photoemission measurements. We further find insights into the universal SC mechanism: (I) $F_{\rm SC}$ increases with the ratio $U/|t_1|$, indicating that $U/|t_1|$ is the principal component controlling the SC. Here, $U$ and $t_1$ are the onsite Coulomb repulsion and the nearest neighbor hopping, respectively, in the Hamiltonians. (II) A universal scaling $T_{c}^{\rm opt}\sim 0.16 \lvert t_1 \rvert F_{\rm SC}$ holds. (III) SC is enhanced and optimized if $U$ is increased beyond the real available materials. It is further enhanced by decreasing the offsite interaction. The present findings provide useful clues for the design of new SC materials with even higher $T_{c}^{\rm opt}$.