Half-filled Honeycomb Lattice Research Articles

Magnetism and Charge Order in the Honeycomb Lattice.

Despite being relevant to better understand the properties of honeycomblike systems, as graphene-based compounds, the electron-phonon interaction is commonly disregarded in theoretical approaches. That is, the effects of phonon fields on interacting Dirac electrons is an open issue, in particular when investigating long-range ordering. Thus, here we perform unbiased quantum MonteCarlo simulations to examine the Hubbard-Holstein model (HHM) in the half-filled honeycomb lattice. By performing careful finite-size scaling analysis, we identify semimetal-to-insulator quantum critical points, and determine the behavior of the antiferromagnetic and charge-density wave phase transitions. We have, therefore, established the ground state phase diagram of the HHM for intermediate interaction strength, determining its behavior for different phonon frequencies. Our findings provide quantitative and qualitative descriptions of the model at intermediate coupling strengths, and may shed light on the emergence of many-body properties in honeycomblike systems.

Effect of exchange interaction on electronic instabilities in the honeycomb lattice: A functional renormalization group study

The impact of local and nonlocal density-density interactions on the electronic instabilities in the honeycomb lattice is widely investigated. Some early studies proposed the emergence of interaction-induced topologically nontrivial phases, but recently, it was denied in several works including renormalization group calculations with refined momentum resolution. We use the truncated unity functional renormalization group to study the many-body instabilities of electrons on the half-filled honeycomb lattice, focusing on the effect of the exchange interaction. We show that varying the next-nearest-neighbor repulsion and nearest-neighbor exchange integral can lead to diverse ordered phases, namely, the quantum spin Hall, the spin-Kekul\'e, and some spin- and charge-density-wave phases. The quantum spin Hall phase can be induced by a combination of the ferromagnetic exchange and pair hopping interactions. Another exotic phase, the spin-Kekul\'e phase, develops in a very small region of the parameter space considered. We encounter the three-sublattice charge-density-wave phase in a large part of the parameter space. It is replaced by the incommensurate charge density wave when increasing the exchange integral. In order to reduce the computational effort, we derive the explicit symmetry relations for the bosonic propagators of the effective interaction and propose a linear-response-based approach for identifying the form factor of order parameter. Their efficiencies are confirmed by numerical calculations in our work.

Interaction-driven phases in the half-filled honeycomb lattice: An infinite density matrix renormalization group study

The emergence of the Haldane Chern insulator state due to strong short range repulsive interactions in the half-filled fermionic spinless honeycomb lattice model has been proposed and challenged with different methods and yet it still remains controversial. In this work we revisit the problem using the infinite density matrix renormalization group method and report numerical evidence supporting i) the absence of the Chern insulator state, ii) two previously unnoticed charge ordered phases and iii) the existence and stability of all the non-topological competing orders that were found previously within mean field. In addition, we discuss the nature of the corresponding phase transitions based on our numerical data. Our work establishes the phase diagram of the half-filled honeycomb lattice model tilting the balance towards the absence of a Chern insulator phase for this model.

Spontaneous loop-spin current with topological characters in the Hubbard model

We find a state characterized by a spontaneous loop-spin current and a single-particle gap in the Hubbard model within the variational cluster approach. This state exists for arbitrarily small interaction in a half-filled honeycomb lattice. Moreover, from the calculations of the topological invariants for the interacting system, it is shown that this gapped state has nontrivial topological characters; this state is the topological Mott insulating state. This result implies the ubiquity of topological Mott insulating phases.

Doublon-holon binding, Mott transition, and fractionalized antiferromagnet in the Hubbard model

We argue that the binding between doubly occupied (doublon) and empty (holon) sites governs the incoherent excitations and plays a key role in the Mott transition in strongly correlated Mott-Hubbard systems. We construct a new saddle point solution with doublon-holon binding in the Kotliar-Ruckenstein slave-boson functional integral formulation of the Hubbard model. On the half-filled honeycomb lattice and square lattice, the ground state is found to exhibit a continuous transition from the paramagnetic semimetal/metal to an antiferromagnetic ordered Slater insulator with coherent quasiparticles at $U_{c1}$, followed by a Mott transition into an electron-fractionalized AF$^*$ phase without coherent excitations at $U_{c2}$. Such a phase structure appears generic of bipartite lattices without frustration. We show that doublon-holon binding unites the three important ideas of strong correlation: the coherent quasiparticles, the incoherent Hubbard bands, and the deconfined Mott insulator.

Antiferromagnetic critical point on graphene's honeycomb lattice: A functional renormalization group approach

Electrons on the half-filled honeycomb lattice are expected to undergo a direct continuous transition from the semimetallic into the antiferromagnetic insulating phase with increase of on-site Hubbard repulsion. We attempt to further quantify the critical behavior at this quantum phase transition by means of functional renormalization group (RG), within an effective Gross-Neveu-Yukawa theory for an SO(3) order parameter ("chiral Heisenberg universality class"). Our calculation yields an estimate of the critical exponents $\nu \simeq 1.31$, $\eta_\phi \simeq 1.01$, and $\eta_\Psi \simeq 0.08$, in reasonable agreement with the second-order expansion around the upper critical dimension. To test the validity of the present method we use the conventional Gross-Neveu-Yukawa theory with Z(2) order parameter ("chiral Ising universality class") as a benchmark system. We explicitly show that our functional RG approximation in the sharp-cutoff scheme becomes one-loop exact both near the upper as well as the lower critical dimension. Directly in 2+1 dimensions, our chiral-Ising results agree with the best available predictions from other methods within the single-digit percent range for $\nu$ and $\eta_\phi$ and the double-digit percent range for $\eta_\Psi$. While one would expect a similar performance of our approximation in the chiral Heisenberg universality class, discrepancies with the results of other calculations here are more significant. Discussion and summary of various approaches is presented.

Interaction-driven phases in the half-filled spinless honeycomb lattice from exact diagonalization

We investigate the fate of interaction driven phases in the half-filled honeycomb lattice for finite systems via exact diagonalization with nearest and next nearest neighbour interactions. We find evidence for a charge density wave phase, a Kekul\'e bond order and a sublattice charge modulated phase in agreement with previously reported mean-field phase diagrams. No clear sign of an interaction driven Chern insulator phase (Haldane phase) is found despite being predicted by the same mean-field analysis. We characterize these phases by their ground state degeneracy and by calculating charge order and bond order correlation functions.

Nonmagnetic-Defect-Induced Magnetism in Graphene

It is shown that a strong impurity potential induces short-range antiferromagnetic (ferrimagnetic) order around itself in a Hubbard model on a half-filled honeycomb lattice. This implies that short-range magnetic order is induced in monolayer graphene by a nonmagnetic defect such as a vacancy with full hydrogen termination or a chemisorption defect.

Possible Vacancy-Induced Magnetism on a Half-Filled Honeycomb Lattice

The effects of impurities on the magnetism of electrons on a half-filled honeycomb lattice are studied using the self-consistent T -matrix approximation and an exact diagonalization analysis. Staggered susceptibility is found to be enhanced by vacancies; it logarithmically diverges as T →0 even in the absence of electron–electron interaction. It is found that this strong enhancement of staggered susceptibility is brought about by resonance states at zero energy (zero modes) induced by vacancies. Possible magnetic states induced by vacancies are discussed.

Disorder Induced Localized States in Graphene

We consider the electronic structure near vacancies in the half-filled honeycomb lattice. It is shown that vacancies induce the formation of localized states. When particle-hole symmetry is broken, localized states become resonances close to the Fermi level. We also study the problem of a finite density of vacancies, obtaining the electronic density of states, and discussing the issue of electronic localization in these systems. Our results also have relevance for the problem of disorder in d-wave superconductors.

Non-Fermi liquid behavior of electrons in the half-filled honeycomb lattice (A renormalization group approach)

A system of electrons in the two-dimensional honeycomb lattice with Coulomb interactions is described by a renormalizable quantum field theory similar but not equal to QED 3. Renormalization group techniques are used to investigate the infrared behavior of the system that flows to a fixed point with non-Fermi liquid characteristics. There are anomalous dimensions in the ferionic observables, no quasiparticle pole, and anomalous screening of the Coulomb interaction. These results are robust as the Fermi level is not changed by the interaction. The system resembles in the infrared the one-dimensional Luttinger liquid.