Correlated Electron Motion, Flux States and Superconductivity

Abstract

When the onsite correlation is strong, electrons can move by usual hopping only on to empty sites but they can exchange position with their neighbors by a correlated motion. The phase in the former process is fixed and it favors Bloch states. When the concentration of empty sites is small then the latter process dominates and we are free to introduce a phase provided it is chosen to be the same for ↑ and ↓-spin electrons. Since for a partly filled band of non-interacting electrons the introduction of a uniform commensurate flux lowers the energy, the correlated motion can lead to a physical mechanism to generate flux states. These states have a collective gauge variable which is the same for ↑ and ↓-spins and superconducting properties are obtained by expanding around the optimum gauge determined by the usual kinetic energy term. If this latter term has singularities at special fillings then these may affect the superconducting properties.

In its present stage the theory predicts orbital currents which result in a distribution of magnetic fields at crystallographically equivalent sites. Such fields are not observed experimentally.