Tetragonal CuO : suppression of nearest-neighbor correlations in a strongly correlated material

Since tetragonal CuO (t-CuO) is composed of well separated 2D CuO planes [1] it appears as an ideal candidate to connect model calculations with real materials in the quest of understanding the nature of high-temperature superconductivity. We investigate the low-energy electronic properties of t-CuO by means of Cellular Dynamical Mean Field Theory [2, 3] using a 2D Hubbard model. From experiment it was proposed that single layers of t-CuO can be viewed as two weakly interconnected sublattices [4, 5]. Our calculations support this assumption: we find a suppression of the nearest-neighbor (NN) correlations for the benefit of the next-NN ones. The calculated spectral function is in remarkable agreement with photoemission experiments [5], showing that a one-band model is sufficient to capture the low-energy physics of t-CuO. Finally, we study the transition from paramagnetic to antiferromagnetic phase at finite temperature and elucidate the nature of the insulating regime in both phases.

1. W. Siemons et al, PRB 79(19):195122, 2009

2. G. Kotliar et al, PRL 97:186401, 2001

3. T. Maier et al, Rev. Mod. Phys. 87:186401, 2005

4. S. Moser et al, PRL 113:187001, 2014

5. S. Moser et al, PRB 98:140404, 2015