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Mean-field analysis of intra-unit-cell order in the Emery model of the CuO2 plane

Cornell Affiliated Author(s)

Author

M.H. Fischer
Eun-Ah Kim

Abstract

Motivated by recent experiments on high-Tc cuprate superconductors pointing toward intra-unit-cell (IUC) order in the pseudogap phase, we investigate three distinct intra-unit-cell-ordering possibilities: nematic, nematic-spin-nematic, and current-loop order. The first two are Fermi-surface instabilities involving a spontaneous charge and magnetization imbalance between the two oxygen sites in the unit cell, respectively, while the third describes circulating currents within the unit cell. We analyze the three-band Emery model of a single CuO2 layer including various on-site and nearest-neighbor interactions within a self-consistent mean-field approach. We show how these on-site and further-neighbor repulsions suppress or enhance particular IUC orders. In particular, we show that the attractive interactions necessary for nematic and nematic-spin-nematic orders in one-band models have their natural microscopic origin in the O-O on-site and nearest-neighbor repulsions in the three-band model. Finally, we find that while the nematic and nematic-spin-nematic orders cannot coexist in this framework, the loop-current order can coexist with nematic order. © 2011 American Physical Society.

Date Published

Journal

Physical Review B - Condensed Matter and Materials Physics

Volume

84

Issue

14

URL

https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?eid=2-s2.0-80155193001&doi=10.1103%2fPhysRevB.84.144502&partnerID=40&md5=e852b31445f40db0e03c35d64a3ba4cc

DOI

10.1103/PhysRevB.84.144502

Group (Lab)

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