title: Orbital currents in extended Hubbard models of high-Tc cuprate superconductors.
abstract: Motivated by the recent report of broken time-reversal symmetry and zero momentum magnetic scattering in underdoped cuprates, we investigate under which circumstances orbital currents circulating inside a unit cell might be stabilized in extended Hubbard models that explicitly include oxygen orbitals. Using Gutzwiller projected variational wave functions that treat on an equal footing all instabilities, we show that orbital currents indeed develop on finite clusters and that they are stabilized in the thermodynamic limit if additional interactions, e.g., strong hybridization with apical oxygens, are included in the model.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics and Astronomy, Rutgers University, Piscataway, New Jersey 08854, USA.
authors.forename: Cédric
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Weber
authors.forename: Andreas
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Läuchli
authors.forename: Frédéric
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Mila
authors.forename: Thierry
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Giamarchi