Stripe order enhanced superconductivity in the Hubbard model

Hong-Chen Jiang; Steven A Kivelson

doi:10.1073/pnas.2109406119

Stripe order enhanced superconductivity in the Hubbard model

Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2022 Jan 4;119(1):e2109406119. doi: 10.1073/pnas.2109406119.

Authors

Hong-Chen Jiang¹, Steven A Kivelson²

Affiliations

¹ Stanford Institute for Materials and Energy Sciences, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, Stanford University, Menlo Park, CA 94025; hcjiang@stanford.edu kivelson@stanford.edu.
² Department of Physics, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305 hcjiang@stanford.edu kivelson@stanford.edu.

Abstract

Unidirectional ("stripe") charge density wave order has now been established as a ubiquitous feature in the phase diagram of the cuprate high-temperature superconductors, where it generally competes with superconductivity. Nonetheless, on theoretical grounds it has been conjectured that stripe order (or other forms of "optimal" inhomogeneity) may play an essential positive role in the mechanism of high-temperature superconductivity. Here, we report density matrix renormalization group studies of the Hubbard model on long four- and six-leg cylinders, where the hopping matrix elements transverse to the long direction are periodically modulated-mimicking the effect of putative period 2 stripe order. We find that even modest amplitude modulations can enhance the long-distance superconducting correlations by many orders of magnitude and drive the system into a phase with a substantial spin gap and superconducting quasi-long-range order with a Luttinger exponent, [Formula: see text].

Keywords: Hubbard model; doped quantum paramagnet; stripes; superconductivity.