Orbital structure of the effective pairing interaction in the high-temperature superconducting cuprates

• Published in: npj quantum materials Vol. 6; no. 1; pp. 1 - 5
• Main Authors: Mai, Peizhi, Balduzzi, Giovanni, Johnston, Steven, Maier, Thomas A.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Nature Publishing Group 17.03.2021; Nature Portfolio
• Subjects: Chemical bonds; CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND SUPERFLUIDITY; Cuprates; Degrees of freedom; Electronic properties and materials; High temperature; Orbitals; Oxygen; Superconducting properties and materials; Superconductivity
• ISSN: 2397-4648; 2397-4648
• DOI: 10.1038/s41535-021-00326-5

Abstract The nature of the effective interaction responsible for pairing in the high-temperature superconducting cuprates remains unsettled. This question has been studied extensively using the simplified single-band Hubbard model, which does not explicitly consider the orbital degrees of freedom of the relevant CuO 2 planes. Here, we use a dynamical cluster quantum Monte Carlo approximation to study the orbital structure of the pairing interaction in the three-band Hubbard model, which treats the orbital degrees of freedom explicitly. We find that the interaction predominately acts between neighboring copper orbitals, but with significant additional weight appearing on the surrounding bonding molecular oxygen orbitals. By explicitly comparing these results to those from the simpler single-band Hubbard model, our study provides strong support for the single-band framework for describing superconductivity in the cuprates.