Enhanced nematic fluctuations near an antiferromagnetic Mott insulator and possible application to high-$T_c$ cuprates

Abstract

Motivated by the widespread experimental observations of nematicity in strongly underdoped cuprate superconductors, we investigate the possibility of enhanced nematic fluctuations in the vicinity of a Mott insulator that displays Néel-type antiferromagnetic order. By performing a strong-coupling expansion of an effective model that contains both Cu-$d$ and O-$p$ orbitals on the square lattice, we demonstrate that quadrupolar fluctuations in the $p$-orbitals inevitably generate a biquadratic coupling between the spins of the $d$-orbitals. The key point revealed by our classical Monte Carlo simulations and large-$N$ calculations is that the biquadratic term favors local stripe-like magnetic fluctuations, which result in an enhanced nematic susceptibility that onsets at a temperature scale determined by the effective Heisenberg exchange $J$. We discuss the impact of this type of nematic order on the magnetic spectrum and outline possible implications on our understanding of nematicity in the cuprates.

11 pages, 4 figures; includes Supplemental Material (14 pages, 4 figures)

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• Unconventional density waves and superconductivities in Fe-based superconductors and other strongly correlated electron systems
• Unified description of cuprate superconductors using four-band $d$-$p$ model
• Fermi surface in La-based cuprate superconductors from Compton scattering imaging
• Theoretical insights into electronic nematic order, bond-charge orders, and plasmons in cuprate superconductors
• Microscopic evidence for the intra-unit-cell electronic nematicity inside the pseudogap phase in YBa${}_2$Cu${}_4$O${}_8$
• $d$- and $p$-wave quantum liquid crystal orders in cuprate superconductors, $\kappa$-(BEDT-TTF)${}_2$X, and coupled chain Hubbard models: functional-renormalization-group analysis
• Random-strain-induced correlations in materials with intertwined nematic and magnetic orders
• Monte Carlo study of cuprate superconductors in a four-band $d$-$p$ model: Role of orbital degrees of freedom
• Strain tuning and anisotropic spin correlations in iron-based systems