On polarons and dimerons in the two-dimensional attractive Hubbard model

TL;DR

This study investigates polaron and dimeron states in a two-dimensional attractive Fermi-Hubbard model, finding no polaron-to-dimeron transition at certain fillings, and introduces a sign-problem free Monte Carlo algorithm for large-scale simulations.

Contribution

The paper develops a determinant diagrammatic Monte Carlo algorithm for the 2D Fermi-Hubbard model and compares it with variational methods, providing new insights into polaron physics on a lattice.

Findings

No polaron-to-dimeron transition observed at fillings 0.1 to 0.4.

Polaron state remains energetically favorable with finite residue.

Algorithm enables high-order diagram sampling at large attraction strengths.

Abstract

A two-dimensional spin-up ideal Fermi gas interacting attractively with a spin-down impurity in the continuum undergoes, at zero temperature, a first-order phase transition from a polaron to a dimeron state. Here we study a similar system on a square lattice, by considering the attractive 2D Fermi-Hubbard model with a single spin-down and a finite filling fraction of spin-up fermions. We study polaron and dimeron quasi-particle properties via variational Ansatz up to one particle-hole excitation. Moreover, we develop a determinant diagrammatic Monte Carlo algorithm for this problem based on expansion in bare on-site coupling $U$. This algorithm turns out to be sign-problem free at any filling of spin-up fermions, allowing one to sample very high diagram order (larger than $200$ in our study) and to do simulations for large $U/t$ (we go up to $U/t=-20$ with $t$ the hopping strength). Both methods give qualitatively consistent results. With variational Ansatz we go to even larger on-site attraction. In contrast with the continuum case, we do not observe any polaron-to-dimeron transition for a range of spin-up filling fractions $\rho_{\uparrow}$ between $0.1$ and $0.4$. % (away from the low-filling limit). The polaron state always gives a lower energy and has a finite quasi-particle residue.