D-wave superconductivity in a strongly correlated electron-phonon system.

Abstract

The problem of phonon-mediated and phonon-free contributions to d-wave superconductivity in the two-dimensional Hubbard model has been addressed. Strong local correlations (U\ensuremath{\rightarrow}\ensuremath{\infty} limit) have been incorporated in the slave boson formulation. In order to consider electron-boson and electron-phonon coupling on equal footing, fluctuations of the auxiliary boson fields over their mean-field value have been introduced. The magnitude of effective pairing interactions derived with the help of a canonical transformation indicates that within the weak-coupling theory, phonon-mediated pairing plays a marginal role and can be dominated by a phonon-free pairing mechanism. On the other hand, in the strong-coupling limit (Eliashberg formulation), electron-phonon and electron-phonon-boson interactions can significantly enhance the superconducting transition temperature. It is also shown that Coulomb correlations together with the electron-phonon interaction can effectively stabilize a d-wave superconducting state. \textcopyright{} 1996 The American Physical Society.