Stripes, Antiferromagnetism, and the Pseudogap in the Doped Hubbard Model at Finite Temperature
/ Authors
/ Abstract
The interplay between thermal and quantum fluctuations controls the competition between phases of matter in strongly correlated electron systems. We study finite-temperature properties of the strongly coupled two-dimensional doped Hubbard model using the minimally-entangled typical thermal states (METTS) method on width $4$ cylinders. We discover that a novel phase characterized by commensurate short-range antiferromagnetic correlations and no charge ordering occurs at temperatures above the half-filled stripe phase extending to zero temperature. The transition from the antiferromagnetic phase to the stripe phase takes place at temperature $T/t \approx 0.05$ and is accompanied by a step-like feature of the specific heat. We find the single-particle gap to be smallest close to the nodal point at $\mathbf{k}=(\pi/2, \pi/2)$ and detect a maximum in the magnetic susceptibility. These features bear a strong resemblance to the pseudogap phase of high-temperature cuprate superconductors. The simulations are verified using a variety of different unbiased numerical methods in the three limiting cases of zero temperature, small lattice sizes, and half-filling.
Journal: Physical Review X