Finite-temperature study of correlations in a bilayer band insulator

Abstract

We perform the finite-temperature determinant quantum Monte Carlo simulation for the attractive Hubbard model on the half-filled bilayer square lattice. Recent progress on optical lattice experiments lead us to investigate various single-particle properties such as momentum distribution and double occupancies which should be easily measured in cold-atom experiments. The pair-pair and the density-density correlations have been studied in detail, and through finite-size scaling, we show that there is no competing charge density wave order in the bilayer band-insulator model and that the superfluid phase is the stable phase for the interaction range $\abs{U}/t = 5-10$. We show the existence of two energy scales in the system as we increase the attractive interaction, one governing the phase coherence and the other one corresponding to the molecule formation. In the end, we map out the full $T-U$ phase diagram and compare the $T_c$ obtained through the mean-field analysis. We observe that the maximum $T_c/t(= 0.27)$ occurs for $\abs{U}/t = 6$, which is roughly twice the reported $T_c$ of the single-layer attractive Hubbard model.