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Interactions between electrons and phonons play a crucial role in quantum materials. Yet, there is no universal method that would simultaneously accurately account for strong electron-phonon interactions and electronic correlations. By combining methods of the variational quantum eigensolver and the variational non-Gaussian solver, we develop a hybrid quantum-classical algorithm suitable for this type of correlated systems. This hybrid method tackles systems with arbitrarily strong electron-phonon coupling without increasing the number of required qubits and quantum gates, as compared to purely electronic models. We benchmark our method by applying it to the paradigmatic Hubbard-Holstein model at half filling, and show that it correctly captures the competition between charge density wave and antiferromagnetic phases, quantitatively consistent with exact diagonalization.

 

How a Mott insulator develops into a weakly coupled metal upon doping is a central question to understanding various emergent correlated phenomena. To analyze this evolution and its connection to the high-T_ccuprates, we study the single-particle spectrum for the doped Hubbard model using cluster perturbation theory on superclusters. Starting from extremely low doping, we identify a heavily renormalized quasiparticle dispersion that immediately develops across the Fermi level, and a weakening polaronic side band at higher binding energy. The quasiparticle spectral weight roughly grows at twice the rate of doping in the low doping regime, but this rate is halved at optimal doping. In the heavily doped regime, we find both strong electron-hole asymmetry and a persistent presence of Mott spectral features. Finally, we discuss the applicability of the single-band Hubbard model to describe the evolution of nodal spectra measured by angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) on the single-layer cuprate La_2−xSr_xCuO₄(0 ≤x≤ 0.15). This work benchmarks the predictive power of the Hubbard model for electronic properties of high-T_ccuprates.

 

Strange metals—ubiquitous in correlated quantum materials—transport electrical charge at low temperatures but not by the individual electronic quasiparticle excitations, which carry charge in ordinary metals. In this work, we consider two-dimensional metals of fermions coupled to quantum critical scalars, the latter representing order parameters or fractionalized particles. We show that at low temperatures (T), such metals generically exhibit strange metal behavior with aT-linear resistivity arising from spatially random fluctuations in the fermion-scalar Yukawa couplings about a nonzero spatial average. We also find aTln(1/T) specific heat and a rationale for the Planckian bound on the transport scattering time. These results are in agreement with observations and are obtained in the largeNexpansion of an ensemble of critical metals withNfermion flavors.

 

Perturbative considerations account for the properties of conventional metals, including the range of temperatures where the transport scattering rate is 1/ τ tr  = 2 π λ T , where λ is a dimensionless strength of the electron–phonon coupling. The fact that measured values satisfy λ  ≲ 1 has been noted in the context of a possible “Planckian” bound on transport. However, since the electron–phonon scattering is quasielastic in this regime, no such Planckian considerations can be relevant. We present and analyze Monte Carlo results on the Holstein model which show that a different sort of bound is at play: a “stability” bound on λ consistent with metallic transport. We conjecture that a qualitatively similar bound on the strength of residual interactions, which is often stronger than Planckian, may apply to metals more generally. 

Abstract The superconducting critical temperature T c of intercalated iron-selenide superconductor (Li,Fe)OHFeSe (FeSe11111) can be increased to 42 from 8 K of bulk FeSe. It shows remarkably similar electronic properties as the high- T c monolayer FeSe and provides a bulk counterpart to investigate the origin of enhanced superconductivity. Unraveling the nature of excitations is crucial for understanding the pairing mechanism in high- T c iron selenides. Here we use resonant inelastic x-ray scattering (RIXS) to investigate the excitations in FeSe11111. Our high-quality data exhibit several Raman-like excitations, which are dispersionless and isotropic in momentum transfer in both superconducting 28 K and 42 K samples. Using atomic multiplet calculations, we assign the low-energy ~0.3 and 0.7 eV Raman peaks as local e g  −  e g and e g  −  t 2 g orbital excitations. The intensity of these two features decreases with increasing temperature, suggesting a dominating contribution of the orbital fluctuations. Our results highlight the importance of the orbital degree of freedom for high- T c iron selenides.