Ferromagnetism, paramagnetism, and a Curie-Weiss metal in an electron-doped Hubbard model on a triangular lattice

Abstract

Motivated by the unconventional properties and rich phase diagram of NaxCoO2 we consider the electronic and magnetic properties of a two-dimensional Hubbard model on an isotropic triangular lattice doped with electrons away from half-filling. Dynamical mean-field theory (DMFT) calculations predict that for negative inter-site hopping amplitudes (t<0) and an on-site Coulomb repulsion, U, comparable to the bandwidth, the system displays properties typical of a weakly correlated metal. In contrast, for t>0 a large enhancement of the effective mass, ferromagnetism and a Curie-Weiss magnetic susceptibility are found in a broad electron doping range. Our observation of Nagaoka ferromagnetism is consistent with the A-type antiferromagnetism (i.e. ferromagnetic layers stacked antiferromagnetically) observed in neutron scattering experiments on NaxCoO2. We propose that `Curie-Weiss metal' phase observed in NaxCoO2 is a consequence of the crossover from ``bad metal'' with incoherent quasiparticles at temperatures T>T* and Fermi liquid behavior with enhanced parameters below T*, where T* is a low energy coherence scale induced by strong local Coulomb electron correlations. We propose a model which contains the charge ordering phenomena observed in the system which, we propose, drives the system close to the Mott insulating phase even at large dopings.