SO(5) Theory of Antiferromagnetism and Superconductivity

We study the fermionic states of the antiferromagnetically ordered vortex cores predicted to exist in the superconducting phase of the newly proposed SO(5) model of strongly correlated electrons. Our model calculation gives a natural explanation of the recent STM measurements on BSCCO, which in surprising contrast to YBCO revealed completely insulating vortex cores.

In this paper we present calculations of the SO(5) quantum rotor theory of high-T$_{c}$ superconductivity in Zeeman magnetic field. We use the spherical approach for five-component quantum rotors in three-dimensional lattice to obtain formulas for critical lines, free energy, entropy and specific heat and present temperature dependences of these quantities for different values of magnetic field. Our results are in qualitative agreement with relevant experiments on high-T$_{c}...

We construct a class of microscopic electron models with exact SO(5) symmetry between antiferromagnetic and d-wave superconducting ground states. There is an exact one-to-one correspondence between both single-particle and collective excitations in both phases. SO(5) symmetry breaking terms can be introduced and classified according to irreducible representations of the exact SO(5) algebra. The resulting phase diagram and collective modes are identical to that of the SO(5) no...

In this talk I give a brief update on the recent progress in the SO(5) theory of high T_c superconductivity (Science, 275: 1089,1997). Reviewed topics include SO(5) ladders, the unification of BCS and SDW quasi-particles in the SO(5) theory and the microscopic origin of the condensation energy.

A correspondence between the $SO(5)$ theory of High-T${}_C$ superconductivity and antiferromagnetism, put forward by Zhang and collaborators, and a theory of gravity arising from symmetry breaking of a $SO(5)$ gauge field is presented. A physical correspondence between the order parameters of the unified SC/AF theory and the generators of the gravitational gauge connection is conjectured. A preliminary identification of regions of geometry, in solutions of Einstein's equation...

Keeping in mind some salient features of quantum symmetry groups and in lieu of the interesting critique by Baskaran and Anderson of the hypothesis of the SO(5) model of Zhang and the related works of others such as Sachdev to describe superconductivity and antiferromagnetism we propose a conjecture to model these complex phenomenona by quantum groups, at least as a starting point.

The generic symmetry of a system under a uniform Zeeman magnetic field is U(1) x U(1). However, we show that SO(5) models in the presence of a finite chemical potential and a finite Zeeman magnetic field can have a exact SU(2) x U(1) symmetry. This principle can be used to test SO(5) symmetry at any doping level.

We study the structure of symmetric vortices in a Ginzburg-Landau model based on S. C. Zhang's SO(5) theory of high temperature superconductivity and antiferromagnetism. We consider both a full Ginzburg-Landau theory (with Ginzburg-Landau scaling parameter kappa) and a high-kappa limiting model. In all cases we find that the usual superconducting vortices (with normal phase in the central core region) become unstable (not energy minimizing) when the chemical potential crosses...

Numerical and analytical results are reviewed, which support SO(5) symmetry as a concept unifying superconductivity and antiferromagnetism in the high-temperature superconductors. Exact cluster diagonalizations verify that the low-energy states of the two-dimensional t-J and Hubbard models, widely used microscopic models for the high-Tc cuprates, form SO(5) symmetry multiplets. Apart from a small standard deviation ~J/10, these multiplets become degenerate at a critical chemi...

We consider the projected SO(5) bosonic model introduced in order to connect the SO(5) theory of high-T$_c$ superconductivity with the physics of the Mott-insulating gap, and derive the corresponding effective functional describing low-energy degrees of freedom. At the antiferromagnetic-superconducting transition, SO(5) symmetry-breaking effects due to the gap are purely quantum mechanical and become irrelevant in the neighborhood of a possible finite-temperature multicritica...