Effect of orbital currents on the restricted optical sum rule.pdfVIP

Effect of orbital currents on the restricted optical conductivity sum rule 1 2 ∗ 2 L. Benfatto , S.G. Sharapov , and H. Beck 1D´epartment de Physique, Universit´e de Fribourg, P´erolles, CH-1700 Fribourg, Switzerland 2Institut de Physique, Universit´e de Neuchˆatel, CH-2000 Neuchˆatel, Switzerland (Dated: February 2, 2008) We derive the restricted optical-conductivity sum rule for a model with circulating orbital cur- rents. It is shown that an unusual coupling of the vector potential to the interaction term of the 4 model Hamiltonian results in a non-standard form of the sum rule. As a consequence, the temper- 0 0 ature dependence of the restricted spectral weight could be compatible with existing experimental data for high-T cuprates above the critical temperature T . We extend our results to the supercon- 2 c c ducting state, and comment on the differences and analogies between these two symmetry-breaking n phenomena. u J PACS numbers: 71.10.-w, 74.25.Gz, 72.15.-v, 74.72.-h 7 ] l e - I. INTRODUCTION r t s . Recent results extracted from measurements [1, 2, 3, 4, 5] of the in-plane optical conductivity σ (ω ) in t Bi Sr CaCu O (BSCCO) place strong constraints on possible theories of high-T superconductivity. Special atten- a 2 2 2 8+δ