Theory of Gossamer and resonating valence bond superconductivity

Abstract

We use an effective Hamiltonian for two-dimensional Hubbard model including an antiferromagnetic spin-spin coupling term to study recently proposed Gossamer superconductivity. We apply a renormalized mean field theory to approximately take into account the strong correlation effect in partially projected Gutzwiller wave functions. At the half-filling, there is a first order phase transition to separate a Mott insulator at large Coulomb repulsion U from a Gossamer superconductor at small U. At the critical value U = U c, the charge carrier density and the superconducting (SC) order parameter change discontinuously from zero in the Mott insulating phase to finite values in the Gossamer SC phase. The first order transition is due to the interplay of the kinetic and spin exchange energies. As the electron density changes away from half-filling, the Gossamer SC state changes smoothly, while the Mott insulator is evolved into a resonating valence bond (RVB) SC state. The Gossamer and RVB SC states have the same pairing symmetry. The SC order parameter changes smoothly from a RVB SC state at U > U c to a Gossamer SC state at U < U c at a fixed nonhalf-filled electron density. We argue that the RVB SC state is smoothly connected to the Gossamer SC state, hence to the BCS state. © 2005 The American Physical Society.