The attractive Hubbard model as an $SO(3)$ system of competing phases: supersolid order and its thermal melting

Abstract: Competition between superconductivity and charge order is a recurring theme in contemporary condensed matter physics. This is quintessentially captured in the attractive Hubbard model, a simple theoretical model where the competition can be directly tuned. In previous studies by the current authors, it has been suggested that the Hubbard model maps to an $SO(3)$ non-linear sigma model, where the phase competition becomes manifest. In this article, we rigorously demonstrate this mapping and use it to study thermal disordering of a supersolid. Starting with the attractive Hubbard model in the presence of an orbital field, we take the limit of strong coupling where a pseudospin description emerges. The in-plane pseudospin components represent superconducting pairing while the out-of-plane component encodes charge density wave order. We obtain an effective spin-$1/2$ Hamiltonian with ferromagnetic in-plane couplings and antiferromagnetic z-z couplings. In addition, the orbital field gives rise to a textured Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction that has the same periodicity as the magnetic unit cell. In order to examine the nature of ordering in this spin model, we consider it in the classical limit. We assume slowly varying fields, leading to the $SO(3)$ non-linear sigma model description. As an application of these ideas, we study the nature of ordering using simulated annealing and classical Monte Carlo simulations. The ground state represents a supersolid with coexisting superconductivity and charge order. It can be viewed as a `meron crystal', a regular arrangement of superconducting vortices with charge-ordered cores. The coherent overlap of core regions gives rise to coherent long-ranged charge order. As the temperature is raised, this charge order is lost via a sharp phase transition in the Ising universality class.