Instability towards Staggered Loop Currents in the Three-Orbital Model for Cuprate Superconductors

Abstract

We present evidence for the existence of a spontaneous instability towards an orbital loop-current phase in a multiorbital Hubbard model for the CuO${}_2$ planes in cuprates. Contrary to the previously proposed ${\theta }_{II}$ phase with intra-unit cell currents, the identified instability is towards a staggered pattern of intertwined current loops. The orbitally resolved current pattern thereby shares its staggered character with the proposal of d-density wave order. The current pattern will cause a Fermi surface reconstruction and the opening of a pseudogap. We argue that the pseudogap phase with time-reversal symmetry breaking currents is susceptible to further phase transitions and therefore offers a route to account for axial incommensurate charge order and a polar Kerr effect in underdoped cuprates.

8 pages, 5 figures, a new section was added (Sec. VI Concluding Remarks), and the previous version was reformatted (supplementary materials are mostly merged with the body of the manuscript)

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Cited by in corpus (12)

• Fractionalized pair density wave in the pseudo-gap phase of cuprate superconductors
• Charge orders, magnetism and pairings in the cuprate superconductors
• Pseudogap and superconductivity in two-dimensional doped charge-transfer insulators
• Superconducting stripes in the hole-doped three-band Hubbard model
• Metal-insulator transition in the ground-state of the three-band Hubbard model at half-filling
• Emergence of Charge Loop Current in Geometrically Frustrated Hubbard Model: Functional Renormalization Group Study
• Coexistence of ${\Theta }_{II}$-loop-current order with checkerboard d-wave CDW/PDW order in a hot-spot model for cuprate superconductors
• The phase diagram of the underdoped cuprates at high magnetic field
• Angle Resolved Photo-Emission Spectroscopy signature of the Resonant Excitonic State
• Emergence of charge order in a staggered loop-current phase of cuprate high-temperature superconductors
• Incipient loop current order in the under-doped cuprate superconductors
• Charge and current orders in the spin-fermion model with overlapping hot spots