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Emergence of charge loop current in the geometrically frustrated Hubbard model: A functional renormalization group study

R. Tazai, Y. Yamakawa, and H. Kontani, Phys. Rev. B 103, L161112 (2021).

Spontaneous current orders due to odd-parity order parameters have attracted increasing attention in various strongly correlated metals. we discover a spin-fluctuation-driven charge loop current (cLC) mechanism based on the functional renormalization group theory. The present mechanism leads to the ferro-cLC order in a simple frustrated chain Hubbard model. The cLC appears between the antiferromagnetic and d-wave superconducting (dSC) phases. While the microscopic origin of the cLC has a close similarity to that of the dSC, the cLC transition temperature TcLC can be higher than the dSC one for a wide parameter range. Furthermore, we reveal that the ferro-cLC order is driven by the strong enhancement of the forward scatterings g2 and g4 owing to the two dimensionality based on the g-ology language. The present study indicates that the cLC can emerge in metals near the magnetic criticality with geometrical frustration.

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