UC Davis

To shed light on how electronic correlations vary across the phase diagram of the cuprate superconductors, we examine the doping evolution of spin and charge excitations in the single-band Hubbard model using determinant quantum Monte Carlo (DQMC). In the single-particle response, we observe that the effects of correlations weaken rapidly with doping, such that one may expect the random phase approximation (RPA) to provide an adequate description of the two-particle response. In contrast, when compared to RPA, we find that significant residual correlations in the two-particle excitations persist up to 40% hole and 15% electron doping (the range of dopings achieved in the cuprates). These fundamental differences between the doping evolution of single- and multiparticle renormalizations show that conclusions drawn from single-particle processes cannot necessarily be applied to multiparticle excitations. Eventually, the system smoothly transitions via a momentum-dependent crossover into a weakly correlated metallic state where the spin and charge excitation spectra exhibit similar behavior and where RPA provides an adequate description.