Optical conductivity from cluster dynamical mean-field theory: Formalism and application to high-temperature superconductors

The optical conductivity of the one-band Hubbard model is calculated using the dynamical cluster approximation implementation of dynamical mean-field theory for parameters appropriate to high-temperature copper-oxide superconductors. The calculation includes vertex corrections and the result demonstrates their importance. At densities of one electron per site, an insulating state is found with gap value and above-gap absorption consistent with measurements. As carriers are added the above-gap conductivity rapidly weakens and a three component structure emerges, with a low-frequency Drude peak, a mid-infrared absorption, and a remnant of the insulating gap. The mid-infrared feature obtained at intermediate dopings is shown to arise from a pseudogap structure in the density of states. On further doping the conductivity evolves to the Drude peak plus weakly frequency dependent tail structure expected for less strongly correlated metals.