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# A strong-coupling expansion for the Hubbard model

## I Introduction

In the last two decades, the discovery of heavy-fermion compounds, high-$`T_c`$ superconductors and organic conductors has revived interest in strongly correlated electron systems. Although the first investigations go back to the 1960s, a proper understanding of correlation effects in Fermi systems remains a fundamental issue in condensed-matter physics. Even for the Hubbard model,  which is supposed to be one of the simplest (realistic) models of strongly correlated fermions, exact solutions or well-controlled approximations exist only in a few special cases, like in one-dimension  or in the limit of infinite dimension.

In a system where the Coulomb interaction dominates, it is natural to treat the latter exactly and then consider the kinetic energy within perturbation theory. In the Hubbard model, this amounts to expanding around the atomic limit (no intersite hopping: $`t=0`$). \[This kind of expansion will be referred to as strong-coupling expansion.\] One of the first examples of a strong-coupling expansion is due to Anderson. Before the introduction of the Hubbard model, he showed that Fermi systems with a strong local Coulomb repulsion are described by an effective Heisenberg Hamiltonian at half-filling (one particle per site on average). The strong on-site Coulomb repulsion $`U`$ completely freezes out the kinetic energy, and virtual intersite hopping results in an effective antiferromagnetic (AF) exchange interaction with coupling constant $`J=4t^2/U`$.

The strong-coupling expansion for the Hubbard model presents technical difficulties that do not show up in standard weak coupling perturbation theories. Since the atomic Hamiltonian is not quadratic (it contains the on-site Coulomb repulsion), there is no Wick’s theorem so that the standard many-body techniques cannot be applied. The perturbation theory in the hopping amplitude is based on a cumulant expansion with no linked cluster theorem. Given these technical difficulties, it is not surprising that contradicting results for the expansion of the free energy and other thermodynamical quantities can be found in the literature.  The calculation of dynamical quantities turns out to be even more involved. The first attempt to calculate the single-particle Green’s function is due to Hubbard. His approach became effective only with the latter development of a Wick’s theorem for Hubbard operators. The strong-coupling expansion based on Hubbard operators remains however quite cumbersome, since it does not rely on standard many-body techniques for fermionic or bosonic fields.

An elegant derivation of the strong-coupling expansion has been recently introduced by Sarker and Pairault et al. Metzner has obtained the same results, but his derivation is not as direct. The basic idea of this approach is to decouple the intersite hopping term by means of a Grassmannian Hubbard-Stratonovich transformation. The resulting action for the Grassmannian auxiliary field $`\psi `$ allows for a systematic perturbative expansion based on Wick’s theorem. The (bare) propagator of the $`\psi `$ field being proportional to the intersite hopping amplitude, a diagram with $`p`$ lines (i.e. $`p`$ propagators) is of order $`t^p`$. The Green’s functions of the original fermions are simply related to those of the $`\psi `$ field and can also be obtained in a systematic way. One of the difficulties of the strong-coupling perturbation theory is that there is now an infinite number of vertices. They are given by the connected atomic Green’s functions and have therefore a non-trivial time dependence. High-order contributions are not easily obtained analytically, but can be nevertheless systematically computed using a specially designed computer program (see Ref. ). Another problem lies in the fact that the calculated Green’s functions (to a given order in $`t`$) do not have the correct analytical properties. This difficulty was circumvented in Ref.  by representing the Green’s function as a finite Jacobi continued fraction, which ensures the correct analytical behavior.

Besides technical difficulties, the expansion around the atomic limit faces a more serious problem, namely the existence of two dimensionless expansion parameters, $`t/U`$ and $`t/T`$ ($`T=1/\beta `$ is the temperature). Whereas hopping processes that do change the total number of doubly occupied sites are of order $`t/U`$, there are also processes that do not involve the small parameter $`t/U`$. The former processes correspond to virtual transitions between the lower (LHB) and upper (UHB) Hubbard bands, and the latter to intraband propagation. \[Here we assume that the system is a Mott-Hubbard insulator.\] This implies that expanding around the atomic limit is valid only at high temperature ($`Tt`$), when intraband hopping processes are suppressed by the small parameter $`t/T`$, while we are mainly interested in the low-temperature regime $`Tt`$. This failure of the strong-coupling approach was recognized early on, which motivated a reorganization of the perturbative expansion. Harris and Lange were the first to derive an effective Hamiltonian which describes exactly intraband hopping processes, while virtual interband transitions are considered perturbatively to a given order in $`t/U`$.  To first order in $`t/U`$, this yields the Hamiltonian of the $`t`$-$`J`$ model.

The aim of this paper is to modify the strong-coupling expansion for the Hubbard model introduced in Refs.  in order to clearly distinguish between intra and interband processes, thus allowing for an expansion in $`t/U`$. Hopping processes that do and those that do not conserve the total number of doubly occupied sites are identified by introducing slave particles (bosons) which act as projectors onto the empty, singly occupied, and doubly occupied atomic states (Sec. II).  We emphasize however that the slave particles are treated exactly, which is possible since they intervene in fine only in the atomic limit. The Grassmannian Hubbard-Stratonovich transformation then requires the introduction of a two-component fermionic auxiliary field $`\psi (\psi _+,\psi _{})^T`$, where $`\psi _+`$ ($`\psi _{}`$) corresponds to a particle in the UHB (LHB). The single-particle propagator is naturally expressed as a function of a $`2\times 2`$ matrix self-energy. A simple approximation for the self-energy in the large-$`U`$ limit predicts a metal-insulator transition. We compare this result with the one obtained within the Hubbard-I approximation.

In Sec. III, we further modify our formalism in order to set up a strong-coupling expansion around a “non-degenerate” ground-state where each singly occupied state has a well defined spin direction (which may fluctuate in time). This is achieved by introducing a time- and space-fluctuating spin-quantization axis in the functional integral (Sec. III A). This provides a spin-rotation-invariant slave-boson description, which is an alternative approach to the operator formalism derived by Li et al.  The effective action of charge carriers in the lower Hubbard band is derived in Sec. III B. To lowest order in $`t/U`$, the coupling between holes and spin fluctuations (which arise from the dynamics of the spin quantization axis) is described by a U(1) gauge-field theory, in agreement with previous conclusions.  To first order in $`t/U`$, we recover the action of the $`t`$-$`J`$ model in the spin-hole coherent-state path integral. We also compare our results with those previously obtained by studying fluctuations around the large-$`U`$ Hartree-Fock saddle point.

## II $`t`$$`/U`$ expansion

We consider a $`D`$-dimensional bipartite lattice. The Hubbard model is defined by the Hamiltonian

$$H=t\underset{𝐫,𝐫^{},\sigma }{}(\widehat{c}_{𝐫\sigma }^{}\widehat{c}_{𝐫^{}\sigma }+\mathrm{h}.\mathrm{c}.)+U\underset{𝐫}{}\widehat{n}_𝐫\widehat{n}_𝐫,$$
(1)
where $`\widehat{c}_{𝐫\sigma }`$ is a fermionic operator for a $`\sigma `$-spin particle at site $`𝐫`$ ($`\sigma =,`$), $`\widehat{n}_{𝐫\sigma }=\widehat{c}_{𝐫\sigma }^{}\widehat{c}_{𝐫\sigma }`$, and $`𝐫,𝐫^{}`$ denotes nearest neighbors.

The hopping term in (1) does not distinguish between processes that do or do not conserve the total number of doubly occupied sites. Such a distinction can be made by writing the fermion operator as $`\widehat{c}_{𝐫\sigma }=\widehat{n}_{𝐫\overline{\sigma }}\widehat{c}_{𝐫\sigma }+(1\widehat{n}_{𝐫\overline{\sigma }})\widehat{c}_{𝐫\sigma }`$ \[$`\overline{\sigma }=()`$ for $`\sigma =()`$\]. It is more convenient to rewrite this decomposition using the slave boson representation of the Hubbard model due to Kotliar and Ruckenstein.  Introducing two fermionic ($`\widehat{f}_𝐫,\widehat{f}_𝐫`$) and four bosonic ($`\widehat{e}_𝐫,\widehat{p}_𝐫,\widehat{p}_𝐫,\widehat{d}_𝐫`$) operators, the four atomic states (empty, singly occupied, and doubly occupied) are expressed as

$`|0,𝐫`$ $`=`$ $`\widehat{e}_𝐫^{}|\mathrm{vac},`$ (2)
$`|\sigma ,𝐫`$ $`=`$ $`\widehat{c}_{𝐫\sigma }^{}|0,𝐫=\widehat{p}_{𝐫\sigma }^{}\widehat{f}_{𝐫\sigma }^{}|\mathrm{vac}(\sigma =,),`$ (3)
$`|,𝐫`$ $`=`$ $`\widehat{c}_𝐫^{}\widehat{c}_𝐫^{}|0,𝐫=\widehat{d}_𝐫^{}\widehat{f}_𝐫^{}\widehat{f}_𝐫^{}|\mathrm{vac},`$ (4)
where $`|\mathrm{vac}`$ denotes the vacuum of the enlarged Hilbert space. This enlarged space contains unphysical states which can be eliminated by imposing the set of constraints

$`Q_𝐫^{(1)}`$ $`=`$ $`\widehat{e}_𝐫^{}\widehat{e}_𝐫+{\displaystyle \underset{\sigma }{}}\widehat{p}_{𝐫\sigma }^{}\widehat{p}_{𝐫\sigma }+\widehat{d}_𝐫^{}\widehat{d}_𝐫1=0,`$ (5)
$`Q_{𝐫\sigma }^{(2)}`$ $`=`$ $`\widehat{f}_{𝐫\sigma }^{}\widehat{f}_{𝐫\sigma }\widehat{p}_{𝐫\sigma }^{}\widehat{p}_{𝐫\sigma }\widehat{d}_𝐫^{}\widehat{d}_𝐫=0(\sigma =,),`$ (6)
at each lattice site $`𝐫`$. The bosonic operators $`\widehat{e}_𝐫`$, $`\widehat{p}_{𝐫\sigma }`$ and $`\widehat{d}_𝐫`$ act respectively as projection operators onto the empty, singly occupied (with spin $`\sigma `$) and doubly occupied states. The Hubbard Hamiltonian (1) is rewritten as

$$H=t\underset{𝐫,𝐫^{},\sigma }{}\underset{\alpha ,\alpha ^{}=\pm }{}(\widehat{\gamma }_{𝐫\alpha \sigma }^{}\widehat{\gamma }_{𝐫^{}\alpha ^{}\sigma }+\mathrm{h}.\mathrm{c}.)+U\underset{𝐫}{}\widehat{d}_𝐫^{}\widehat{d}_𝐫,$$
(7)
where we have introduced the operators

$`\widehat{\gamma }_{𝐫\sigma }`$ $`=`$ $`\widehat{e}_𝐫^{}\widehat{p}_{𝐫\sigma }\widehat{f}_{𝐫\sigma },`$ (8)
$`\widehat{\gamma }_{𝐫+\sigma }`$ $`=`$ $`\widehat{d}_𝐫\widehat{p}_{𝐫\overline{\sigma }}^{}\widehat{f}_{𝐫\sigma },`$ (9)
which annihilate a particle in the LHB and the UHB, respectively. The advantage of the form (7) of the Hamiltonian is that the hopping term now distinguishes between intraband ($`\alpha =\alpha ^{}`$) and interband ($`\alpha =\alpha ^{}`$) processes.

The partition function $`Z=\mathrm{Tr}e^{\beta (H\mu N)}`$ can be written as a functional integral over fermionic ($`f`$) and bosonic ($`e,p,d`$) fields ($`N=_{𝐫\sigma }\widehat{f}_{𝐫\sigma }^{}\widehat{f}_{𝐫\sigma }`$ is the total number of particles and $`\mu `$ the chemical potential)

$`Z`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle }d\lambda {\displaystyle }𝒟[f,e,p,d]\mathrm{exp}\{S_{\mathrm{at}}[c,e,p,d;\lambda ]`$ (11)
$`+{\displaystyle \underset{𝐫,𝐫^{},\alpha ,\alpha ^{},\sigma }{}}{\displaystyle }d\tau \gamma _{𝐫\alpha \sigma }^{}t_{\mathrm{𝐫𝐫}^{}}\gamma _{𝐫^{}\alpha ^{}\sigma }\},`$
where $`\tau `$ is an imaginary time varying between 0 and $`\beta `$. $`t_{\mathrm{𝐫𝐫}^{}}`$ equals $`t`$ if $`𝐫`$ and $`𝐫^{}`$ are first neighbors and vanishes otherwise. The variables $`\gamma _{𝐫\alpha \sigma }`$ are defined from (9) by replacing the operators by fermionic or bosonic fields. $`\lambda (\lambda _𝐫^{(1)},\lambda _{𝐫\sigma }^{(2)})`$ denotes a set of time-independent Lagrange multipliers that impose the constraints (6). $`S_{\mathrm{at}}`$ is the atomic part of the action.

We are now in a position to apply the decoupling procedure introduced in Refs. . Since the field $`\gamma _{𝐫\alpha \sigma }`$ appearing in the hopping term \[Eq. (11)\] carries a band index ($`\alpha =\pm `$), the auxiliary fermionic field involved in the Grassmannian Hubbard-Stratonovich transformation is a two-component field

$$\psi _{𝐫\sigma }=\left(\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{\psi _{𝐫+\sigma }}{\psi _{𝐫\sigma }}\right).$$
(12)
This is the main modification with respect to the strong-coupling expansion of Refs.. The procedure to derive the action of the auxiliary field is similar and is briefly described below. The partition function reads

$`Z`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle 𝒟[\psi ]\mathrm{exp}\left\{\underset{a,b}{}\psi _a^{}\widehat{t}_{ab}^1\psi _b\right\}}`$ (14)
$`\times {\displaystyle }d\lambda {\displaystyle }𝒟[f,e,p,d]\mathrm{exp}\{S_{\mathrm{at}}+{\displaystyle \underset{a}{}}(\psi _a^{}\gamma _a+\mathrm{c}.\mathrm{c}.)\},`$
where we use the notation

$$\psi _a\psi _{𝐫_a\alpha _a\sigma _a}(\tau _a),\underset{a}{}\underset{𝐫_a,\alpha _a,\sigma _a}{}𝑑\tau _a.$$
(16)
We denote by $`\widehat{t}_{\mathrm{𝐫𝐫}^{}}`$ the hopping matrix to emphasize that it acts on the band index of the $`\psi `$ field. It can be written as the tensor product of $`t_{\mathrm{𝐫𝐫}^{}}`$ with a $`2\times 2`$ matrix acting on the band indices:

$$\widehat{t}_{\mathrm{𝐫𝐫}^{}}=t_{\mathrm{𝐫𝐫}^{}}\left(\begin{array}{cc}1& 1\\ 1& 1\end{array}\right).$$
(17)
Note that the matrix $`\widehat{t}`$ cannot be inverted. This is not a real difficulty since the final results can always be expressed in terms of the matrix $`\widehat{t}`$, the inverse matrix $`\widehat{t}^1`$ appearing only at intermediate stages in the calculation. One could also consider a more general matrix where interband and intraband hopping processes have different amplitudes, which ensures the existence of the inverse matrix $`\widehat{t}^1`$.

Performing the functional integration over the fields $`f,e,p,d`$ and the Lagrange multipliers, we obtain

$`{\displaystyle }d\lambda {\displaystyle }𝒟[f,e,p,d]\mathrm{exp}\{S_{\mathrm{at}}+{\displaystyle \underset{a}{}}(\psi _a^{}\gamma _a+\mathrm{c}.\mathrm{c}.)\}`$ (18)
$`=Z_{\mathrm{at}}\mathrm{exp}\left\{W[\psi ^{},\psi ]\right\},`$ (19)
where $`Z_{\mathrm{at}}`$ is the partition function in the atomic limit ($`t=0`$) and $`W[\psi ^{},\psi ]`$ the generating functional of the connected atomic Green’s functions

$`G_{\{a_i,b_i\}}^{Rc}`$ $`=`$ $`(1)^R\gamma _{a_1}\mathrm{}\gamma _{a_R}\gamma _{b_R}^{}\mathrm{}\gamma _{b_1}^{}_{\mathrm{at},\mathrm{c}}`$ (20)
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\delta ^{(2R)}W[\psi ^{},\psi ]}{\delta \psi _{a_1}^{}\mathrm{}\delta \psi _{a_R}^{}\delta \psi _{b_R}\mathrm{}\delta \psi _{b_1}}}|_{\psi ^{}=\psi =0}.`$ (21)
Thus the action of the $`\psi `$ field is given by

$$S[\psi ^{},\psi ]=\underset{a,b}{}\psi _a^{}\widehat{t}_{ab}^1\psi _bW[\psi ^{},\psi ],$$
(22)
where $`W[\psi ^{},\psi ]`$ can be obtained explicitly by inverting Eq. (21):

$$W[\psi ^{},\psi ]=\underset{R=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}\frac{(1)^R}{(R!)^2}\underset{a_i,b_i}{\overset{}{}}\psi _{a_1}^{}\mathrm{}\psi _{a_R}^{}\psi _{b_R}\mathrm{}\psi _{b_1}G_{\{a_i,b_i\}}^{Rc}.$$
(23)
The primed summation in (23) reminds us that all the fields in a given product $`\psi _{a_1}^{}\mathrm{}\psi _{b_1}`$ share the same value of the site index. Note that the integration of the bosonic fields and the Lagrange multipliers has been done exactly. A difference with the strong-coupling expansion introduced in Refs.  is that the effective action of the auxiliary field $`\psi `$ involves the connected atomic Green’s functions projected onto empty, singly occupied, or doubly occupied states. For instance, for the single-particle Green’s function, we find (see Appendix A)

$`G_\sigma (i\omega )`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1n_{\overline{\sigma }}}{i\omega +\mu }},`$ (24)
$`G_{+\sigma }(i\omega )`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{n_{\overline{\sigma }}}{i\omega +\mu U}},`$ (25)
for the LHB and UHB atomic Green’s functions, respectively. Here $`\omega `$ is a fermionic Matsubara frequency, and $`n_\sigma `$ the average number of $`\sigma `$-spin particles per site. The atomic Green’s function of the original fermions ($`c`$) is simply given by the sum of $`G_\sigma `$ and $`G_{+\sigma }`$.

The free propagator of the auxiliary field is $`\widehat{t}`$, i.e. $`\psi _a\psi _b^{}_{\mathrm{free}}=\widehat{t}_{ab}`$, and we may now use Wick’s theorem to treat the interaction terms contained in $`W[\psi ^{},\psi ]`$ perturbatively. A diagram with $`p`$ lines (i.e. $`p`$ free propagators) is of order $`t^p`$. The matrix structure of $`\widehat{t}`$ allows to distinguish between processes of order $`t/U`$ and those of order $`t/T`$. The former correspond to off-diagonal elements of $`\widehat{t}_{\mathrm{𝐫𝐫}^{}}`$ and the latter to diagonal elements.

Although the action (22) allows to set up a systematic $`t/U`$ expansion, some difficulties remain. The first step would be to find an exact or approximate solution to lowest order in $`t/U`$, before considering interband coupling perturbatively. But this requires to consider an infinite number of vertices, with no obvious small expansion parameter since $`t/T1`$ at low temperature. Except in one dimension, where an exact solution exists,  this problem is still unsolved. In Sec. III, we propose a slightly different formulation which solves (at least partially) this problem. Nevertheless, it is interesting to discuss approximate expressions of the single-particle Green’s function that can be obtained from Eq. (22). This is done in the next section.

### Single-particle Green’s function

The single-particle Green’s function $`\widehat{𝒢}_{ab}=\gamma _a\gamma _b^{}`$ is related to the propagator of the auxiliary field $`\widehat{𝒯}_{ab}=\psi _a^{}\psi _b`$ by (in matrix form)

$$\widehat{𝒢}=\widehat{t}^1+\widehat{t}^1\widehat{𝒯}\widehat{t}^1.$$
(26)
Introducing the self-energy $`\widehat{\mathrm{\Gamma }}`$ of the auxiliary field, $`\widehat{𝒯}^1=\widehat{t}^1\widehat{\mathrm{\Gamma }}`$, we obtain

$$\widehat{𝒢}^1=\widehat{t}+\widehat{\mathrm{\Gamma }}^1.$$
(27)
The self-energy $`\widehat{\mathrm{\Gamma }}`$ is now a matrix with respect to the band indices. In reciproqual space, $`\widehat{\mathrm{\Gamma }}_\sigma (𝐤,i\omega )`$ is a $`2\times 2`$ matrix. Consider a $`R`$-particle vertex for the field $`\psi `$ \[Eqs. (22) and (23)\]. If $`p`$ ($`pR`$) incoming particles are in the LHB, then there are exactly $`p`$ outgoing particles in the LHB. One can then easily convince oneself that the $`2\times 2`$ matrix self-energy $`\widehat{\mathrm{\Gamma }}_\sigma (𝐤,i\omega )`$ is diagonal (even though the hopping matrix $`\widehat{t}`$ has off-diagonal elements with respect to band indices). We denote its two components by $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_\sigma (𝐤,i\omega )`$ and $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{+\sigma }(𝐤,i\omega )`$.

The Green’s function of the original fermions is related to $`\widehat{𝒢}`$ by

$$𝒢_\sigma (𝐤,i\omega )=\underset{\alpha ,\alpha ^{}}{}\widehat{𝒢}_{\alpha \alpha ^{},\sigma }(𝐤,i\omega ).$$
(28)
From Eq. (27), we obtain

$$𝒢_\sigma (𝐤,i\omega )=\frac{\mathrm{\Gamma }_\sigma ^{\mathrm{tot}}(𝐤,i\omega )}{1+t_𝐤\mathrm{\Gamma }_\sigma ^{\mathrm{tot}}(𝐤,i\omega )},$$
(29)
where

$$\mathrm{\Gamma }_\sigma ^{\mathrm{tot}}(𝐤,i\omega )=\underset{\alpha }{}\mathrm{\Gamma }_{\alpha \sigma }(𝐤,i\omega ),$$
(30)
and $`t_𝐤`$ is the Fourier transform of $`t_{\mathrm{𝐫𝐫}^{}}`$. \[In the absence of interaction, the band energy is $`ϵ_𝐤=t_𝐤`$.\] Eq. (30) is nothing but the result obtained in Ref. , where $`\mathrm{\Gamma }^{\mathrm{tot}}`$ was calculated in perturbation theory with respect to the hopping amplitude $`t`$. To the extent where the self-energy $`\widehat{\mathrm{\Gamma }}`$ can be calculated exactly, our strong-coupling expansion is similar to that of Ref. .

#### The large-$`U`$ limit

Interband transitions are suppressed when $`U\mathrm{}`$, so that the off-diagonal elements of $`\widehat{t}_𝐤`$ do not play any role. In the large-$`U`$ limit, it is natural to make a diagonal approximation where interband transitions are neglected. The Green’s function is then determined by

$$\widehat{𝒢}_\sigma ^1(𝐤,i\omega )=\left(\begin{array}{cc}t_𝐤+\mathrm{\Gamma }_{+\sigma }(𝐤,i\omega )^1& 0\\ 0& t_𝐤+\mathrm{\Gamma }_\sigma (𝐤,i\omega )^1\end{array}\right).$$
(31)
Eq. (31) gives

$$𝒢_\sigma (𝐤,i\omega )=\frac{1}{t_𝐤+\mathrm{\Gamma }_{+\sigma }(𝐤,i\omega )^1}+\frac{1}{t_𝐤+\mathrm{\Gamma }_\sigma (𝐤,i\omega )^1}.$$
(32)
The calculation of $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{+\sigma }`$ and $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_\sigma `$ remains a very difficult task. The simplest approximation (lowest order in $`t`$) consists in retaining only the Gaussian part of the action $`S[\psi ^{},\psi ]`$ \[Eq. (22)\]:

$$\mathrm{\Gamma }_{\alpha \sigma }(𝐤,i\omega )=G_{\alpha \sigma }(i\omega ).$$
(33)
From (32) we deduce

$$𝒢_\sigma (𝐤,i\omega )=\frac{1n_{\overline{\sigma }}}{i\omega +\mu +(1n_{\overline{\sigma }})t_𝐤}+\frac{n_{\overline{\sigma }}}{i\omega +\mu U+n_{\overline{\sigma }}t_𝐤}.$$
(34)
Retaining only the Gaussian part of the action $`S[\psi ^{},\psi ]`$ \[Eq. (33)\] is clearly unjustified, since this amounts to ignoring terms of order $`(t/T)^p`$ ($`p1`$) which are not small at low temperature. Nevertheless, this approximation yields interesting results. At half-filling ($`\mu =U/2`$ and $`n_\sigma =1/2`$), we obtain two Hubbard bands with dispersions

$`E_{+\sigma }(𝐤)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{Ut_𝐤}{2}},`$ (35)
$`E_\sigma (𝐤)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{U+t_𝐤}{2}}.`$ (36)
The Hubbard bands can be seen as due to the broadening of the atomic levels when the intersite hopping is switched on. They are separated by the Mott-Hubbard gap $`\mathrm{\Delta }=UB/2`$ ($`B`$ is the total bandwidth in the absence of interaction), which closes for the critical value $`U_c=B/2`$ of the Coulomb interaction. This simple approximation \[Eq. (34)\] therefore predicts a metal-insulator transition at half-filling. It should be noted however that the bandwidth of the Hubbard bands is only half the total bandwidth $`B`$ in the absence of interaction. This is clearly an artifact of our approximation where only the particle (or the hole) that was added to the system can propagate. If the particle injected in the UHB has spin $`\sigma `$, it can hop to the neighboring site only if the latter is occupied by a $`\overline{\sigma }`$-spin particle, so that the hopping amplitude is reduced by a factor $`n_{\overline{\sigma }}`$. \[A similar results holds for the propagation of a hole in the LHB.\] We expect the exact bandwidth of the Hubbard bands to be of order $`B`$ in agreement with Mott’s arguments. For the same reason, we find that the Mott gap $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ separating the two bands closes for the critical value $`U_c=B/2`$, while Mott suggested $`U_cB`$.

The fact that the single-particle propagator is naturally expressed as a function of a $`2\times 2`$ matrix self-energy has also been noted by Logan and Nozières.  This result is reported in Ref.  where an expression similar to Eq. (34) is discussed \[Eq. (3.38) of Ref. \]. The difference with Eq. (34) is that the Hubbard bands have the full bandwidth $`B`$.

The result obtained in this section should be compared with the Hubbard-I approximation, which predicts the opening of a charge gap for any finite value of the Coulomb repulsion $`U`$. The Hubbard-I approximation is obtained from Eq. (29) with the lowest-order contribution in $`t`$ for the self-energy $`\mathrm{\Gamma }^{\mathrm{tot}}`$, i.e. $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_\sigma ^{\mathrm{tot}}=_\alpha G_{\alpha \sigma }`$.  It can also be obtained from Eqs. (31) and (33) by including in (31) the off-diagonal elements of the matrix $`\widehat{t}_𝐤`$. Thus we see that the Hubbard-I approximation includes interband coupling without giving a correct description of the Hubbard bands to zeroth order in $`t/U`$.

## III Non-degenerate $`t`$$`/U`$ expansion

An important feature of the strong-coupling perturbative theory is that one expands around a state which has a huge degeneracy near half-filling, since a particle on a singly-occupied site can have its spin up or down. In this section we propose an alternative approach which allows to expand around a “non-degenerate” ground-state.

In our formalism, the degeneracy of the ground-state shows up in the atomic Green’s functions $`G^{Rc}`$ which contain all the information about the atomic limit ($`t=0`$). These Green’s functions have to be calculated with the chemical potential $`\mu `$ defined by the full Hubbard model. At half-filling, $`\mu =U/2`$ due to particle-hole symmetry. In the presence of a small concentration of holes, the chemical potential lies near the top of the LHB, i.e. above the energy of the isolated atomic state. Therefore, at low enough temperature (when $`T`$ is much smaller than half the bandwidth of the LHB), the system in the atomic limit is in its ground-state with exactly one particle per site (even in the presence of a finite concentration of holes). To suppress the degeneracy of the ground-state, we then proceed as follows. We impose the particles to have spin up. In order to restore spin-rotation invariance, we then allow the spin-quantization axis to fluctuate in time and space, and integrate over all possible configurations in the functional integral. For a given configuration of the spin-quantization axis, the expansion in the hopping amplitude $`t`$ becomes a non-degenerate perturbation theory. We shall show that this formulation allows to derive the effective action of charge carriers in the LHB to first order in $`t/U`$. We recover the action of the $`t`$-$`J`$ model in the spin-hole coherent-state path integral.  We also comment on the effective action obtained by studying fluctuations around the large-$`U`$ Hartree-Fock saddle point. Within our formalism, the results of this approach are reproduced by retaining only the quadratic part of the auxiliary-field action. This Gaussian approximation however does not capture all processes of order $`t/U`$, and therefore does not allow to derive the $`t`$-$`J`$ model.

In section III A, we express the partition function as a functional integral where the spin-quantization axis fluctuates in time and space. This provides a spin-rotation-invariant slave-boson approach to the Hubbard model. An alternative approach, based on the operator formalism, has been proposed by Li et al. The effective action of charge carriers in the LHB is then derived in Sec. III B.

### A Spin-rotation-invariant slave-boson approach

The procedure to introduce a fluctuating spin-quantization axis in the functional integral has been given by Schulz.  It simply amounts to introducing a new field related to the old one by a unitary matrix $`R_𝐫`$, which rotates the spin-quantization axis at site $`𝐫`$ and time $`\tau `$ from $`\widehat{𝐳}`$ to a new axis defined by the unit vector $`𝛀_𝐫`$ ($`\widehat{𝐳}`$ is the unit vector along the $`z`$ axis). In the present case, the procedure is slightly more complicated due to the presence of the slave bosons. Indeed it has been shown in Ref.  that the bosonic field $`p_𝐫`$ transforms under a spin rotation as a $`2\times 2`$ spin matrix field $`p_{𝐫\sigma \sigma ^{}}`$ rather than as a two-component spinor field $`p_{𝐫\sigma }`$. We show below that the introduction of a $`2\times 2`$ spin matrix field can be avoided if one builds the functional integral from the very beginning.

Let us first go back to the operator formalism. At each lattice site, we rotate the local spin-quantization axis by introducing a new fermionic operator

$$\widehat{\varphi }_𝐫=R_𝐫^{}\widehat{c}_𝐫,$$
(37)
where $`\widehat{c}_𝐫=(\widehat{c}_𝐫,\widehat{c}_𝐫)^T`$, $`\widehat{\varphi }_𝐫=(\widehat{\varphi }_𝐫,\widehat{\varphi }_𝐫)^T`$, and $`R_𝐫`$ is a unitary SU(2)/U(1) rotation matrix defined by

$$R_𝐫\sigma _zR_𝐫^{}=𝝈𝛀_𝐫.$$
(38)
$`𝝈=(\sigma _x,\sigma _y,\sigma _z)`$ stands for the Pauli matrices. The field $`\widehat{\varphi }_𝐫`$ has its spin-quantization axis along the (time-independent) unit vector $`𝛀_𝐫`$. The U(1) gauge freedom is due to rotations around the $`z`$ axis that do not change the state of the system. A convenient gauge choice is

$$R_𝐫=\left(\begin{array}{cc}\mathrm{cos}(\theta _𝐫/2)& e^{i\phi _𝐫}\mathrm{sin}(\theta _𝐫/2)\\ e^{i\phi _𝐫}\mathrm{sin}(\theta _𝐫/2)& \mathrm{cos}(\theta _𝐫/2)\end{array}\right),$$
(39)
where $`\theta _𝐫,\phi _𝐫`$ are the usual polar angles determining the direction of $`𝛀_𝐫`$.

The interaction term being rotation invariant, the Hamiltonian is rewritten as

$$H=\underset{𝐫,𝐫^{}}{}\widehat{\varphi }_𝐫^{}R_𝐫^{}t_{\mathrm{𝐫𝐫}^{}}R_𝐫^{}\widehat{\varphi }_𝐫^{}+U\underset{𝐫}{}\widehat{\varphi }_𝐫^{}\widehat{\varphi }_𝐫\widehat{\varphi }_𝐫^{}\widehat{\varphi }_𝐫.$$
(40)
As in Sec. II, we introduce fermionic ($`\widehat{f}_{𝐫\sigma }`$) and bosonic ($`\widehat{e}_𝐫,\widehat{p}_{𝐫\sigma },\widehat{d}_𝐫`$) operators at each lattice site (with spin-quantization axis given by $`𝛀_𝐫`$) which satisfy the constraints (6). In this slave boson representation, the Hamiltonian is given by

$$H=\underset{𝐫,𝐫^{},\alpha ,\alpha ^{}}{}\widehat{\gamma }_{𝐫\alpha }^{}R_𝐫^{}t_{\mathrm{𝐫𝐫}^{}}R_𝐫^{}\widehat{\gamma }_{𝐫^{}\alpha ^{}}+U\underset{𝐫}{}\widehat{d}_𝐫^{}\widehat{d}_𝐫,$$
(41)
where $`\widehat{\gamma }_{𝐫\alpha }=(\widehat{\gamma }_{𝐫\alpha },\widehat{\gamma }_{𝐫\alpha })^T`$. $`\widehat{\gamma }_{𝐫\alpha \sigma }`$ is defined by Eq. (9).

In order to express the partition function as a functional integral, we divide the “time” interval $`\beta `$ into $`M`$ steps:

$$Z=\mathrm{Tr}\left(e^{ϵ(H\mu N)}\mathrm{}e^{ϵ(H\mu N)}\right),$$
(42)
where $`ϵ=\beta /M`$. We then introduce $`M1`$ times the closure relation using mixed fermion-boson coherent states. An important point here is that the local spin-quantization axis $`𝛀_𝐫`$ depends a priori on the discrete “time” $`\tau _k=k\beta /M`$ ($`k=0,\mathrm{}M`$) and therefore becomes a dynamical variable $`𝛀_𝐫(\tau )`$ in the continuum time limit ($`M\mathrm{}`$). Spin-rotation invariance is obtained by summing over all possible configurations of the unit vector field $`𝛀_𝐫`$, i.e.

$$Z\underset{𝐫}{}\underset{k=1}{\overset{M}{}}\frac{d𝛀_𝐫(\tau _k)}{4\pi }Z𝒟𝛀Z.$$
(43)
The details of this derivation are given in Appendix B. We obtain

$$Z=𝒟𝛀𝑑\lambda 𝒟[f,e,p,d]e^S,$$
(44)
where $`\lambda (\lambda _𝐫^{(1)},\lambda _{𝐫\sigma }^{(2)})`$ denotes a set of time-independent Lagrange multipliers that impose the constraints (6). The action is given by

$$S=S_{\mathrm{at}}\underset{𝐫,𝐫^{},\alpha ,\alpha ^{}}{}𝑑\tau \gamma _{𝐫\alpha }^{}R_𝐫^{}t_{\mathrm{𝐫𝐫}^{}}R_𝐫^{}\gamma _{𝐫^{}\alpha ^{}}.$$
(45)
The atomic part reads

$$S_{\mathrm{at}}=S_{\mathrm{at}}^{(0)}+𝑑\tau \underset{𝐫,\sigma ,\sigma ^{}}{}f_{𝐫\sigma }^{}p_{𝐫\sigma }^{}(R_𝐫^{}\dot{R}_𝐫)_{\sigma \sigma ^{}}f_{𝐫\sigma ^{}}p_{𝐫\sigma ^{}},$$
(46)
where $`\dot{R}_𝐫=_\tau R_𝐫`$. $`S_{\mathrm{at}}^{(0)}`$ is the atomic action for a time-independent spin-quantization axis \[see Eq. (B29)\]. Fluctuations of the spin-quantization axis modify the hopping term \[Eq. (45)\] and induce an additional term in the atomic action \[Eq. (46)\]. As shown below, the latter is related to the Berry phase term of a singly occupied site (which behaves as a spin).

### B Effective action of charge carriers in the LHB

The partition function (44) obviously preserves spin-rotation invariance. As discussed above, we can now assume that the LHB is populated only with up-spin particles (in the local spin reference frame defined by $`𝛀_𝐫`$). This implies that only down-spin particles can be introduced in the UHB. Spin-rotation invariance is maintained since we integrate over all configurations of the unit vector field $`𝛀_𝐫`$ in the functional integral.

The assumption that the LHB is populated only with up-spin particles is imposed by eliminating the $`p_{}`$ field. The action then reads

$`S`$ $`=`$ $`S_{\mathrm{at}}{\displaystyle \underset{𝐫,𝐫^{}}{}}{\displaystyle 𝑑\tau \gamma _𝐫^{}R_𝐫^{}t_{\mathrm{𝐫𝐫}^{}}R_𝐫^{}\gamma _𝐫^{}},`$ (47)
$`S_{\mathrm{at}}`$ $`=`$ $`S_{\mathrm{at}}^{(0)}+{\displaystyle 𝑑\tau \underset{𝐫}{}f_𝐫^{}p_𝐫^{}A_{𝐫z}^0f_𝐫p_𝐫},`$ (48)
$`S_{\mathrm{at}}^{(0)}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{𝐫}{}}{\displaystyle }d\tau [i\lambda _𝐫^{(1)}+{\displaystyle \underset{\sigma }{}}f_{𝐫\sigma }^{}(_\tau \mu +i\lambda _{𝐫\sigma }^{(2)})f_{𝐫\sigma }+e_𝐫^{}(_\tau +i\lambda _𝐫^{(1)})e_𝐫`$ (50)
$`+p_𝐫^{}(_\tau +i\lambda _𝐫^{(1)}i\lambda _𝐫^{(2)})p_𝐫+d_𝐫^{}(_\tau +i\lambda _𝐫^{(1)}i{\displaystyle \underset{\sigma }{}}\lambda _{𝐫\sigma }^{(2)}+U)d_𝐫].`$
where

$$\gamma _𝐫=\left(\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{\gamma _𝐫}{\gamma _𝐫}\right)\left(\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{\gamma _𝐫}{\gamma _{𝐫+}}\right).$$
(51)
The fields $`\gamma _𝐫`$ and $`\gamma _{𝐫+}`$ do not appear any more. Note that the UHB (LHB) can be labeled by the band index $`\alpha =+`$ ($`\alpha =`$) or the spin index $`\sigma =`$ ($`\sigma =`$). In the following we use the spin index to label the Hubbard bands. $`A_{𝐫z}^0=(R_𝐫^{}\dot{R}_𝐫)_{}`$ is defined by writing the gauge field $`A_𝐫^0=R_𝐫^{}\dot{R}_𝐫`$ as $`A_𝐫^0=_{\nu =x,y,z}A_{𝐫\nu }^0\sigma _\nu `$.

The Hubbard-Stratonovich decoupling of the hopping term requires the introduction of the auxiliary fermionic field

$$\psi _𝐫=\left(\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{\psi _𝐫}{\psi _𝐫}\right)\left(\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{\psi _𝐫}{\psi _{𝐫+}}\right).$$
(52)
The partition function can be written as

$`Z`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle 𝒟𝛀\mathrm{det}(\widehat{t})𝒟[\psi ]\mathrm{exp}\left\{\underset{a,b}{}\psi _a^{}\widehat{t}_{ab}^1\psi _b\right\}}`$ (54)
$`\times {\displaystyle }d\lambda {\displaystyle }𝒟[f,e,p,d]\mathrm{exp}\{S_{\mathrm{at}}+{\displaystyle \underset{a}{}}(\psi _a^{}\gamma _a+\mathrm{c}.\mathrm{c}.)\},`$
where the hopping matrix

$$\widehat{t}_{\mathrm{𝐫𝐫}^{}}=R_𝐫^{}t_{\mathrm{𝐫𝐫}^{}}R_𝐫^{}$$
(56)
acts on the spin/band indices. Note that $`\mathrm{det}(\widehat{t})`$ depends on $`𝛀`$ and should therefore be kept explicitly in the functional integral. Using Eq. (39), the matrix $`R_𝐫^{}R_𝐫^{}`$ can be expressed as

$$R_𝐫^{}R_𝐫^{}=\frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}\left(\begin{array}{cc}(1+𝛀_𝐫𝛀_𝐫^{})^{1/2}e^{i\mathrm{\Phi }_{𝐫,𝐫^{}}/2}& (1𝛀_𝐫𝛀_𝐫^{})^{1/2}e^{i\mathrm{\Phi }_{𝐫,𝐫^{}}^{}/2}\\ (1𝛀_𝐫𝛀_𝐫^{})^{1/2}e^{i\mathrm{\Phi }_{𝐫,𝐫^{}}^{}/2}& (1+𝛀_𝐫𝛀_𝐫^{})^{1/2}e^{i\mathrm{\Phi }_{𝐫,𝐫^{}}/2}\end{array}\right),$$
(57)
where $`\mathrm{\Phi }_{𝐫,𝐫^{}}\mathrm{\Phi }(𝛀_𝐫,𝛀_𝐫^{})`$ is the signed solid angle spanned by the vectors $`𝛀_𝐫,𝛀_𝐫^{},\widehat{𝐳}`$, and $`\mathrm{\Phi }_{𝐫,𝐫^{}}^{}=\mathrm{\Phi }(𝛀_𝐫,𝛀_𝐫^{})2\phi _𝐫^{}`$. $`\mathrm{\Phi }`$ and $`\mathrm{\Phi }^{}`$ satisfy the relations $`\mathrm{\Phi }_{𝐫^{},𝐫}=\mathrm{\Phi }_{𝐫,𝐫^{}}`$, $`\mathrm{\Phi }_{𝐫^{},𝐫}^{}=\mathrm{\Phi }_{𝐫,𝐫^{}}^{}+2\pi `$.

Performing the integration over the fields $`f,e,p,d`$ and the Lagrange multipliers, we obtain

$`Z`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle 𝒟𝛀Z_{\mathrm{at}}[𝛀]\mathrm{det}(\widehat{t})}`$ (59)
$`\times {\displaystyle }𝒟[\psi ]\mathrm{exp}\{{\displaystyle \underset{a,b}{}}\psi _a^{}\widehat{t}_{ab}^1\psi _b+W[\psi ^{},\psi ;𝛀]\},`$
where

$`Z_{\mathrm{at}}[𝛀]`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle 𝑑\lambda 𝒟[f,e,p,d]\mathrm{exp}\left\{S_{\mathrm{at}}\right\}}`$ (60)
$`=`$ $`Z_{\mathrm{at}}^{(0)}\mathrm{exp}\left\{S_B[𝛀]\right\}`$ (61)
is the partition function in the atomic limit for a given configuration of the fluctuating spin-quantization axis $`𝛀_𝐫`$. The generating functional of the connected atomic Green’s functions $`W[\psi ^{},\psi ;𝛀]`$ depends on $`𝛀_𝐫`$ since $`S_{\mathrm{at}}`$ does. $`S_B[𝛀]`$ is calculated by treating the gauge field $`A_{𝐫z}^0`$ in perturbation in Eq. (61). To lowest order (in a cumulant expansion)

$`S_B[𝛀]`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{𝐫}{}}{\displaystyle 𝑑\tau f_𝐫^{}p_𝐫^{}f_𝐫p_𝐫_{S_{\mathrm{at}}^{(0)}}A_{𝐫z}^0}`$ (62)
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{𝐫}{}}{\displaystyle 𝑑\tau A_{𝐫z}^0}.`$ (63)
Higher-order corrections, of order $`t/U`$, are ignored. This is justified since the spin dynamics is slow compared to the interband-transition dynamics. \[The second line of Eq. (63) is easily obtained by following the “philosophy” of Appendix C.\] $`S_B`$ is a collection of Berry phase terms for spins localized at the lattice sites. Using Eq. (39), it can be written as

$`S_B[𝛀]`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{i}{2}}{\displaystyle \underset{𝐫}{}}{\displaystyle 𝑑\tau (1\mathrm{cos}\theta _𝐫)\dot{\phi }_𝐫}`$ (64)
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{i}{2}}{\displaystyle \underset{𝐫}{}}{\displaystyle 𝑑\tau 𝐀(𝛀)\dot{𝛀}},`$ (65)
where $`𝐀(𝛀)`$ is the vector potential created by a magnetic monopole sitting at the center of a unit sphere.

Thus, the action of the $`\psi `$ field can be written as \[see Eqs. (59) and (61)\]

$`S[\psi ^{},\psi ;𝛀]`$ $`=`$ $`\mathrm{ln}\mathrm{det}(\widehat{t})+S_B[𝛀]`$ (67)
$`+{\displaystyle \underset{a,b}{}}\psi _a^{}\widehat{t}_{ab}^1\psi _bW[\psi ^{},\psi ;𝛀]`$
$`=`$ $`\mathrm{ln}\mathrm{det}(\widehat{t})+S_B[𝛀]+{\displaystyle \underset{a,b}{}}\psi _a^{}(\widehat{t}_{ab}^1+G_{ab})\psi _b`$ (69)
$`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{(2!)^2}}{\displaystyle \underset{a_i,b_i}{}}G_{a_1a_2,b_1b_2}^{\mathrm{II}c}\psi _{a_1}^{}\psi _{a_2}^{}\psi _{b_2}\psi _{b_1}.`$
In the second line of (69), we have retained only the quadratic and quartic parts, since this is sufficient to obtain the effective action of holes in the LHB to first order in $`t/U`$ (see below).

In order to completely determine the action $`S[\psi ^{},\psi ;𝛀]`$, we need to compute $`G`$ and $`G^{\mathrm{II}c}`$. The single-particle Green’s function $`G`$ is calculated in Appendix C:

$$G_{𝐫\sigma }^1=G_\sigma ^{(0)1}\mathrm{sgn}(\sigma )A_{𝐫z}^0,$$
(70)
where $`\mathrm{sgn}(\sigma )=1(1)`$ for $`\sigma =()`$. $`G^{(0)}`$ is the atomic Green’s function corresponding to $`S_{\mathrm{at}}^{(0)}`$ \[Eq. (50)\]:

$`G_{}^{(0)}(\tau )`$ $`=`$ $`\theta (\tau +\eta )e^{\mu \tau },`$ (71)
$`G_{}^{(0)}(\tau )`$ $`=`$ $`\theta (\tau \eta )e^{(\mu U)\tau },`$ (72)
where $`\eta 0^+`$, and the limit $`T0`$ has been taken. In Fourier space, Eqs. (72) become $`G_{}^{(0)}(i\omega )=(i\omega +\mu )^1`$ and $`G_{}^{(0)}(i\omega )=(i\omega +\mu U)^1`$.

Neglecting the Berry phase term $`A^0`$, we can obtain $`G^{\mathrm{II}c}`$ using the method of Appendix A. It is straightforward to modify this approach in order to impose the constraint that the LHB is populated by up-spin particles only. At $`T=0`$, we find

$`G_{\sigma \sigma ,\sigma \sigma }^{\mathrm{II}c}(\tau _1,\tau _2;\tau _3,\tau _4)`$ $`=`$ $`0,`$ (73)
$`G_,^{\mathrm{II}c}(\tau _1,\tau _2;\tau _3,\tau _4)`$ $`=`$ $`G_{}^{(0)}(\tau _1\tau _3)G_{}^{(0)}(\tau _2\tau _4)`$ (75)
$`\times [\theta (\tau _1\tau _2)\theta (\tau _3\tau _4)].`$
Since $`G_{\sigma \sigma ,\sigma \sigma }^{\mathrm{II}c}=0`$, $`G^{\mathrm{II}c}`$ necessarily involves (virtual) interband transitions. The typical energy scale ($`U`$) for these transitions being much larger than the typical energy scale for spin fluctuations ($`J=4t^2/U`$), we can ignore the effect of $`A^0`$ on $`G^{\mathrm{II}c}`$. Eq. (73) can easily be extended to higher-order connected Green’s functions:

$$G_{\sigma \mathrm{}\sigma ,\sigma \mathrm{}\sigma }^{Rc}=0(R2).$$
(76)
In the limit $`U\mathrm{}`$, where interband transitions are suppressed, the action of the $`\psi `$ field is Gaussian. It remains nevertheless highly non-trivial since the intersite hopping term depends on the spin variables $`𝛀_𝐫`$. \[This limit is discussed in Sec. III B 1.\] Furthermore, this implies that only a limited number of higher-order vertices $`G^{Rc}`$ ($`R2`$) is necessary to obtain the effective action to a given order in $`t/U`$ (if one considers only the quadratic and quartic parts of the effective action), since these vertices necessarily involve interband transitions. In particular, it is sufficient to consider $`G^{\mathrm{II}c}`$ to obtain the effective action to first order in $`t/U`$. This is an important difference with the approach of Sec. II, where the action of the auxiliary fermionic field $`\psi `$ involves an infinite number of vertices even in the limit $`U\mathrm{}`$.

From Eq. (69), it is now possible to integrate out the UHB to obtain the effective action of a hole in the LHB. It is more convenient to first perform another Hubbard-Stratonovich transformation of the hopping term in (69). If this transformation were carried out exactly (i.e. on the exact action $`S[\psi ^{},\psi ;𝛀]`$), one would essentially “undo” the first Hubbard-Stratonovich transformation and recover the original action $`S[\gamma ^{},\gamma ;𝛀]`$ \[Eq. (50)\]. Here the idea is that to first order in $`t/U`$, one can truncate the action $`S[\psi ^{},\psi ;𝛀]`$ as in Eq. (69). One then obtains an effective action $`S[\gamma ^{},\gamma ;𝛀]`$ which contains all processes of order $`t/U`$. It is then possible to integrate out the UHB (i.e. the field $`\gamma _{}`$) to obtain the effective action $`S[\gamma _{}^{},\gamma _{};𝛀]`$ for the LHB.

Following this procedure, we obtain

$`Z`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle 𝒟𝛀𝒟[\gamma ]\mathrm{exp}\left\{S[\gamma ^{},\gamma ;𝛀]\right\}},`$ (77)
$`S[\gamma ^{},\gamma ;𝛀]`$ $`=`$ $`S_B[𝛀]{\displaystyle \underset{a,b}{}}\gamma _a^{}\widehat{t}_{ab}\gamma _b`$ (79)
$`\stackrel{~}{W}[\gamma ^{},\gamma ;𝛀]\mathrm{ln}\stackrel{~}{Z}[𝛀],`$
where

$$\stackrel{~}{Z}[𝛀]=𝒟[\psi ]\mathrm{exp}\left\{W[\psi ^{},\psi ;𝛀]\right\}.$$
(80)
Note that $`\gamma `$, which is the auxiliary Grassmannian field of the Hubbard-Stratonovich transformation, is now an independent variable. $`\stackrel{~}{W}[\gamma ^{},\gamma ;𝛀]`$ is the generating functional of connected Green’s functions obtained from the action $`W[\psi ^{},\psi ;𝛀]`$. To lowest order in $`t/U`$, $`\mathrm{ln}\stackrel{~}{Z}[𝛀]=\mathrm{ln}\mathrm{det}(G)=S_B[𝛀]`$. Again we neglect corrections of order $`t/U`$ to the Berry phase term. Retaining only the quadratic and quartic parts of the effective action, we have

$`S[\gamma ^{},\gamma ;𝛀]`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{a,b}{}}\gamma _a^{}(\widehat{t}_{ab}\stackrel{~}{G}_{ab})\gamma _b`$ (82)
$`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{(2!)^2}}{\displaystyle \underset{a_i,b_i}{}}\stackrel{~}{G}_{a_1a_2,b_1b_2}^{\mathrm{II}c}\gamma _{a_1}^{}\gamma _{a_2}^{}\gamma _{b_2}\gamma _{b_1},`$
where

$`\stackrel{~}{G}_{ab}`$ $`=`$ $`\psi _a\psi _b^{}_W,`$ (83)
$`\stackrel{~}{G}_{a_1a_2,b_1b_2}^{\mathrm{II}c}`$ $`=`$ $`\psi _{a_1}\psi _{a_2}\psi _{b_2}^{}\psi _{b_1}^{}_{W,c}.`$ (84)
In Eq. (82), it is sufficient to determine $`\stackrel{~}{G}`$ and $`\stackrel{~}{G}^{\mathrm{II}c}`$ to first order in $`t/U`$. We find

$`\stackrel{~}{G}_{ab}`$ $`=`$ $`G_{ab}^1+\stackrel{~}{G}_{ab}^{(1)},`$ (85)
$`\stackrel{~}{G}_{a_1a_2,b_1b_2}^{\mathrm{II}c}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{a_i^{},b_i^{}}{}}G_{a_1a_1^{}}^1G_{a_2a_2^{}}^1G_{a_1^{}a_2^{},b_1^{}b_2^{}}^{\mathrm{II}c}G_{b_1^{}b_1}^1G_{b_2^{}b_2}^1,`$ (86)
where

$$\stackrel{~}{G}_{ab}^{(1)}=\underset{a_i^{},b_i^{}}{}G_{aa_1^{}}^1G_{a_1^{}a_2^{},b_1^{}b_2^{}}^{\mathrm{II}c}G_{b_2^{}a_2^{}}^1G_{b_1^{}b}^1$$
(87)
is the “one-loop” correction to $`G^1`$. From (86), we conclude that $`\stackrel{~}{G}^{\mathrm{II}c}`$ is simply related to the atomic two-particle vertex:

$$\stackrel{~}{G}^{\mathrm{II}c}=\mathrm{\Gamma }^{\mathrm{II}}.$$
(88)
We thus obtain

$`S[\gamma ^{},\gamma ;𝛀]`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{a,b}{}}\gamma _a^{}(\widehat{t}_{ab}+G_{ab}^1\stackrel{~}{G}_{ab}^{(1)})\gamma _b`$ (90)
$`+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{(2!)^2}}{\displaystyle \underset{a_i,b_i}{}}\mathrm{\Gamma }_{a_1a_2,b_1b_2}^{\mathrm{II}}\gamma _{a_1}^{}\gamma _{a_2}^{}\gamma _{b_2}\gamma _{b_1}.`$
Note the important role played by $`\stackrel{~}{G}^{(1)}`$. If we consider the one-loop correction due to $`\mathrm{\Gamma }^{\mathrm{II}}`$, we obtain (among other contributions) an atomic contribution to the propagator of the field $`\gamma `$, which is already included in $`G`$. This contribution is precisely canceled by $`\stackrel{~}{G}^{(1)}`$ (see section III B 2).

Eq. (90) has a clear physical meaning. By performing two successive Hubbard-Stratonovich transformations, and truncating the action $`S[\psi ^{},\psi ;𝛀]`$ in the intermediate step, we have effectively summed the atomic contributions to the single-particle propagator and the two-particle vertex. Since $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_{\sigma \sigma ,\sigma \sigma }^{\mathrm{II}}=0`$, perturbative corrections (due to $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_,^{\mathrm{II}}`$) to the Gaussian action are of order $`t/U`$. In the limit $`U\mathrm{}`$, $`S[\gamma ^{},\gamma ;𝛀]`$ reduces to its Gaussian part (except the term $`\gamma ^{}\stackrel{~}{G}^{(1)}\gamma `$ which is of order $`t/U`$). The effective action for a hole in the LHB can be derived by integrating out the UHB, the two-particle vertex $`\mathrm{\Gamma }_,^{\mathrm{II}}`$ being considered within perturbation theory.

#### 1 Limit $`U\mathrm{}`$

In the absence of interband coupling, we obtain the following effective action for the LHB

$`S_{\mathrm{LHB}}^{(0)}={\displaystyle \underset{𝐫}{}}{\displaystyle 𝑑\tau \gamma _𝐫^{}(_\tau \mu +A_{𝐫z}^0)\gamma _𝐫}`$ (91)
$`{\displaystyle \frac{t}{\sqrt{2}}}{\displaystyle \underset{𝐫,𝐫^{}}{}}{\displaystyle }d\tau (1+𝛀_𝐫𝛀_𝐫^{})^{1/2}[\gamma _𝐫^{}\gamma _𝐫^{}e^{i\mathrm{\Phi }_{𝐫,𝐫^{}}/2}+\mathrm{c}.\mathrm{c}.],`$ (92)
(93)
where we have used Eqs. (57), (70) and (72). From now on, we drop the spin index for fermions in the LHB and denote by $`\gamma `$ the field $`\gamma _{}`$. The action (93) is similar to that obtained by Schulz from the large-$`U`$ Hartree-Fock saddle point.  At half-filling ($`\gamma _𝐫^{}\gamma _𝐫=1`$), it reduces to $`S_B[𝛀]`$. As expected, the half-filled Hubbard model becomes a collection of independent spins in the absence of interband coupling ($`U\mathrm{}`$). The coupling between a hole in the LHB and spin fluctuations is described by a U(1) gauge-field theory.  As pointed out in Ref. , the introduction of a hole (absence of a $`\gamma _{}`$ particle) in the LHB has two effects. (i) The Berry phase term $`A_{𝐫z}^0\gamma _𝐫^{}\gamma _𝐫`$, which is alive when the site $`𝐫`$ is occupied by a particle, is suppressed by the introduction of a hole. This conclusion was first obtained by Shankar from semi-phenomenological arguments.  (ii) The hole can propagate through the system, but spin fluctuations modify the kinetic energy term. The hopping term between two neighboring sites $`𝐫`$ and $`𝐫^{}`$ has its amplitude reduced by a factor $`[(1+𝛀_𝐫𝛀_𝐫^{})/2]^{1/2}`$, and acquires the phase $`\mathrm{\Phi }_{𝐫,𝐫^{}}/2`$. The latter can be interpreted as resulting from an effective magnetic field depending on the spin configuration.  It is then equal to the circulation of the magnetic vector potential on the link between $`𝐫`$ and $`𝐫^{}`$. When going around an elementary plaquette, the accumulated phase $`\mathrm{\Phi }_{1234}`$ corresponds to the magnetic flux through the plaquette, and is given by half the solid angle spanned by the unit vectors $`𝛀_1,𝛀_2,𝛀_3,𝛀_4`$:

$$\mathrm{\Phi }_{1234}=\frac{1}{2}\left[\mathrm{\Phi }_{1,2}+\mathrm{\Phi }_{2,3}+\mathrm{\Phi }_{3,4}+\mathrm{\Phi }_{4,1}\right].$$
(94)
We expect the kinetic energy term to be optimized for a ferromagnetic configuration of the spins, since in that case the effective magnetic field vanishes and the hopping amplitude takes on its maximum value. This is nothing but the familiar Nagaoka phenomenon.

#### 2 Correction of order $`t/U`$

The integration of the field $`\gamma _{}`$ in Eq. (90) will generate a correction $`S_{\mathrm{LHB}}^{(1)}`$ to the effective action $`S_{\mathrm{LHB}}^{(0)}`$. Consider first the quadratic part of $`S_{\mathrm{LHB}}^{(1)}`$. To first order in $`t/U`$, it is given by $`S_{\mathrm{LHB}}^{(1a)}+S_{\mathrm{LHB}}^{(1b)}`$, where

$`S_{\mathrm{LHB}}^{(1a)}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{𝐫,𝐫^{},𝐫^{\prime \prime }}{}}{\displaystyle 𝑑\tau 𝑑\tau ^{}\gamma _𝐫^{}(\tau )(\widehat{t}_{\mathrm{𝐫𝐫}^{}}(\tau ))_{}G_{}(\tau ,\tau ^{})(\widehat{t}_{𝐫^{}𝐫^{\prime \prime }}(\tau ^{}))_{}\gamma _{𝐫^{\prime \prime }}(\tau ^{})},`$ (95)
$`S_{\mathrm{LHB}}^{(1b)}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{𝐫}{}}{\displaystyle 𝑑\tau 𝑑\tau ^{}𝑑\tau _2𝑑\tau _4\gamma _𝐫^{}(\tau )\gamma _𝐫(\tau ^{})\mathrm{\Gamma }_,^{\mathrm{II}}(\tau ,\tau _2;\tau ^{},\tau _4)(G_{}^1+\widehat{t}_{})_{𝐫\tau _4,𝐫\tau _2}^1}.`$ (96)
$`S_{\mathrm{LHB}}^{(1b)}`$ can be expanded in a series in powers of $`\widehat{t}_{}`$. The lowest-order term exactly cancels the term $`\gamma _{}^{}\stackrel{~}{G}_{}^{(1)}\gamma _{}`$ in Eq. (90). The next-order term ($`O(\widehat{t}_{}^2))`$ is proportional to $`𝑑\tau _2𝑑\tau _4G_,^{\mathrm{II}c}(\tau _1,\tau _2;\tau _3,\tau _4)G_{}(\tau _4,\tau _2)`$ and therefore vanishes \[since $`G_,^{\mathrm{II}c}(\tau _1,\tau _2;\tau _3,\tau _4)G_{}(\tau _2,\tau _4)`$\]. For a similar reason, all higher-order terms vanish. Thus the quadratic part of the effective action reduces to $`S_{\mathrm{LHB}}^{(0)}+S_{\mathrm{LHB}}^{(1a)}`$.

Consider now $`S_{\mathrm{LHB}}^{(1a)}`$ (shown diagrammatically in Fig. 1(a)). We have argued above that we can ignore the effect of spin fluctuations on (virtual) interband transitions. This allows us to replace $`G_{}(\tau ,\tau ^{})`$ by $`G_{}^{(0)}(\tau \tau ^{})`$ and $`(\widehat{t}_{𝐫^{}𝐫^{\prime \prime }}(\tau ^{}))_{}`$ by $`(\widehat{t}_{𝐫^{}𝐫^{\prime \prime }}(\tau ))_{}`$ in Eq. (95). Furthermore, since the characteristic energy scale ($`U`$) of a virtual transition is larger than any other typical energy in the system, we can assume $`S_{\mathrm{LHB}}^{(1a)}`$ to be local in time, i.e. $`\gamma _𝐫^{}(\tau )\gamma _𝐫^{}(\tau ^{})\gamma _𝐫^{}(\tau )\gamma _𝐫^{}(\tau )`$. The simple replacement $`\gamma _𝐫^{}(\tau ^{})\gamma _𝐫^{}(\tau )`$ would however lead to a wrong result. Instead, we write $`\gamma (\tau ^{})=\gamma (\tau )e^{\mu (\tau \tau ^{})}`$, which follows from the equation of motion for the field $`\gamma `$ in the atomic limit.  $`S_{\mathrm{LHB}}^{(1a)}`$ is then approximated as

$`S_{\mathrm{LHB}}^{(1a)}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{𝐫,𝐫^{},𝐫^{\prime \prime }}{}}{\displaystyle 𝑑\tau \gamma _𝐫^{}(\tau )\gamma _{𝐫^{\prime \prime }}(\tau )(\widehat{t}_{\mathrm{𝐫𝐫}^{}}(\tau ))_{}(\widehat{t}_{𝐫^{}𝐫^{\prime \prime }}(\tau ))_{}}`$ (98)
$`\times {\displaystyle }d\tau ^{}G_{}^{(0)}(\tau \tau ^{})e^{\mu (\tau \tau ^{})}.`$
Using Eq. (72), the sum over $`\tau ^{}`$ can be written as

$$_0^\tau 𝑑\tau ^{}e^{U(\tau \tau ^{})}\frac{1}{U}.$$
(99)
Using Eq. (57), we finally deduce

$`S_{\mathrm{LHB}}^{(1a)}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{t^2}{2U}}{\displaystyle \underset{𝐫,𝐫^{}}{}}{\displaystyle 𝑑\tau [\gamma _𝐫^{}\gamma _𝐫+\gamma _𝐫^{}^{}\gamma _𝐫^{}](1𝛀_𝐫𝛀_𝐫^{})}`$ (101)
$`{\displaystyle \frac{t^2}{2U}}{\displaystyle \underset{𝐫,𝐫^{},𝐫^{\prime \prime }}{}}{\displaystyle }d\tau (1𝛀_𝐫𝛀_𝐫^{})^{1/2}(1𝛀_𝐫^{}𝛀_{𝐫^{\prime \prime }})^{1/2}[\gamma _𝐫^{}\gamma _{𝐫^{\prime \prime }}e^{i(\mathrm{\Phi }_{𝐫,𝐫^{}}^{}\mathrm{\Phi }_{𝐫^{\prime \prime },𝐫^{}}^{})/2}+\mathrm{c}.\mathrm{c}.],`$
Here $`𝐫,𝐫^{},𝐫^{\prime \prime }`$ stands for a three-site term with both $`𝐫,𝐫^{}`$ and $`𝐫^{},𝐫^{\prime \prime }`$ first neighbors ($`𝐫𝐫^{\prime \prime }`$).

The effective action $`S_{\mathrm{LHB}}^{(0)}+S_{\mathrm{LHB}}^{(1a)}`$ is similar to that of Ref.  derived by studying fluctuations around the large-$`U`$ Hartree-Fock saddle point. In the absence of holes in the LHB, it reduces to the action the AF Heisenberg model with coupling constant $`J=4t^2/U`$,

$$S_{\mathrm{Heis}}[𝛀]=S_B[𝛀]+J\underset{𝐫,𝐫^{}}{}𝑑\tau \left(\frac{𝛀_𝐫𝛀_𝐫^{}}{4}\frac{1}{4}\right),$$
(102)
which is the expected result. Nevertheless, we will show that $`S_{\mathrm{LHB}}^{(0)}+S_{\mathrm{LHB}}^{(1a)}`$ is not the effective action to first order in $`t/U`$. One has to consider the quartic contribution $`S_{\mathrm{LHB}}^{(1c)}`$ to $`S_{\mathrm{LHB}}^{(1)}`$ which results from the integration of the UHB. It will turn out that $`S_{\mathrm{LHB}}^{(1c)}`$, when written in a time-ordered fashion (as it should be in the functional integral), generates a quadratic term which exactly cancels $`S_{\mathrm{LHB}}^{(1a)}`$. What will be left is nothing but the action of the $`t`$-$`J`$ model. In fact, it is easily seen on physical grounds that $`S_{\mathrm{LHB}}^{(1a)}`$ is not the action that we expect to first order in $`t/U`$. The introduction of a hole at a given site $`𝐫`$ should suppress the AF exchange with all the neighboring sites. Now, according to $`S_{\mathrm{LHB}}^{(1a)}`$, the AF coupling between two neighboring sites $`𝐫`$ and $`𝐫^{}`$ is reduced by the presence of a hole at site $`𝐫`$ or $`𝐫^{}`$, but vanishes only if two holes, one at each site, are introduced in the system.

The quartic contribution to the action, shown in Fig. 1(b), is given by

$`S_{\mathrm{LHB}}^{(1c)}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{𝐫,𝐫^{},𝐫^{\prime \prime }}{}}{\displaystyle 𝑑\tau _1𝑑\tau _2𝑑\tau _3𝑑\tau _4𝑑\tau _2^{}𝑑\tau _4^{}\mathrm{\Gamma }_,^{\mathrm{II}}(\tau _1,\tau _2^{};\tau _3,\tau _4^{})G_{}^{(0)}(\tau _2\tau _2^{})G_{}^{(0)}(\tau _4^{}\tau _4)}`$ (104)
$`\times (\widehat{t}_{𝐫^{}𝐫}(\tau _2))_{}(\widehat{t}_{\mathrm{𝐫𝐫}^{\prime \prime }}(\tau _4))_{}\gamma _𝐫^{}(\tau _1)\gamma _𝐫^{}^{}(\tau _2)\gamma _{𝐫^{\prime \prime }}(\tau _4)\gamma _𝐫(\tau _3),`$
where

$$\mathrm{\Gamma }_,^{\mathrm{II}}(\tau _1,\tau _2;\tau _3,\tau _4)=G_{}^{(0)1}(\tau _1\tau _3)G_{}^{(0)1}(\tau _2\tau _4)[\theta (\tau _1\tau _2)\theta (\tau _3\tau _4)].$$
(105)
As for $`S_{\mathrm{LHB}}^{(1a)}`$, one can assume $`S_{\mathrm{LHB}}^{(1c)}`$ to be local in time. Using $`\gamma (\tau )\gamma (0)e^{\mu \tau }`$ and $`\gamma ^{}(\tau )\gamma ^{}(0)e^{\mu \tau }`$, we obtain

$`S_{\mathrm{LHB}}^{(1c)}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{𝐫,𝐫^{},𝐫^{\prime \prime }}{}}{\displaystyle 𝑑\tau _1\gamma _𝐫^{}(\tau _1)\gamma _𝐫^{}^{}(\tau _1)\gamma _{𝐫^{\prime \prime }}(\tau _1)\gamma _𝐫(\tau _1+\eta )(\widehat{t}_{𝐫^{}𝐫}(\tau _1))_{}(\widehat{t}_{\mathrm{𝐫𝐫}^{\prime \prime }}(\tau _1))_{}}`$ (107)
$`\times {\displaystyle }d\tau _2d\tau _3d\tau _4e^{\mu (\tau _1+\tau _2\tau _3\tau _4)}G_{}^{(0)1}(\tau _1\tau _3)G_{}^{(0)}(\tau _2\tau _4)[\theta (\tau _1\tau _4)\theta (\tau _3\tau _2)],`$
where $`\eta 0^+`$. This equation has been obtained by noting that

$$G_{}^{(0)1}(\tau )=\mu \delta (\tau +\eta )\dot{\delta }(\tau +\eta ),$$
(108)
where the overdot denotes time derivative. The infinitesimal $`\eta `$, which is required by a proper treatment of equal-time correlation functions, is crucial here. It implies that $`\tau _3`$ is larger than $`\tau _1`$ in Eq. (104). When approximating $`S_{\mathrm{LHB}}^{(1c)}`$ by a local vertex (in time space), one should keep track of this time ordering, since it does not correspond to the one implicitly assumed in the functional integral. Performing the sum over $`\tau _2,\tau _3,\tau _4`$ in Eq. (107), we deduce

$$S_{\mathrm{LHB}}^{(1c)}=\frac{1}{U}\underset{𝐫,𝐫^{},𝐫^{\prime \prime }}{}𝑑\tau \gamma _𝐫^{}(\tau )\gamma _𝐫(\tau +\eta )\gamma _𝐫^{}^{}(\tau )\gamma _{𝐫^{\prime \prime }}(\tau )(\widehat{t}_{𝐫^{}𝐫}(\tau ))_{}(\widehat{t}_{\mathrm{𝐫𝐫}^{\prime \prime }}(\tau ))_{}.$$
(109)
Noting that $`\gamma _𝐫^{}(\tau )\gamma _𝐫(\tau +\eta )\gamma _𝐫^{}(\tau )\gamma _𝐫(\tau )1`$, we eventually come to

$$S_{\mathrm{LHB}}^{(1c)}=S_{\mathrm{LHB}}^{(1a)}\frac{1}{U}\underset{𝐫,𝐫^{},𝐫^{\prime \prime }}{}𝑑\tau \gamma _𝐫^{}\gamma _𝐫\gamma _𝐫^{}^{}\gamma _{𝐫^{\prime \prime }}(\widehat{t}_{𝐫^{}𝐫})_{}(\widehat{t}_{\mathrm{𝐫𝐫}^{\prime \prime }})_{}.$$
(110)
The quadratic contribution which is generated by the correct time-ordering in the functional integral cancels $`S_{\mathrm{LHB}}^{(1a)}`$.

The effective action to first order in $`t/U`$, $`S_{\mathrm{LHB}}^{(0)}+S_{\mathrm{LHB}}^{(1a)}+S_{\mathrm{LHB}}^{(1c)}`$, is therefore given by

$`S_{\mathrm{LHB}}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{𝐫}{}}{\displaystyle }d\tau \gamma _𝐫^{}(_\tau \mu +A_{𝐫z}^0)\gamma _𝐫{\displaystyle \frac{t}{\sqrt{2}}}{\displaystyle \underset{𝐫,𝐫^{}}{}}{\displaystyle }d\tau (1+𝛀_𝐫𝛀_𝐫^{})^{1/2}[\gamma _𝐫^{}\gamma _𝐫^{}e^{i\mathrm{\Phi }_{𝐫,𝐫^{}}/2}+\mathrm{c}.\mathrm{c}.]`$ (113)
$`+J{\displaystyle \underset{𝐫,𝐫^{}}{}}{\displaystyle 𝑑\tau \left(\frac{𝛀_𝐫𝛀_𝐫^{}}{4}\frac{1}{4}\right)\gamma _𝐫^{}\gamma _𝐫\gamma _𝐫^{}^{}\gamma _𝐫^{}}`$
$`{\displaystyle \frac{t^2}{2U}}{\displaystyle \underset{𝐫^{},𝐫,𝐫^{\prime \prime }}{}}{\displaystyle }d\tau (1𝛀_𝐫𝛀_𝐫^{})^{1/2}(1𝛀_𝐫𝛀_{𝐫^{\prime \prime }})^{1/2}[e^{i(\mathrm{\Phi }_{𝐫,𝐫^{}}^{}\mathrm{\Phi }_{𝐫,𝐫^{\prime \prime }}^{})/2}\gamma _𝐫^{}\gamma _𝐫\gamma _𝐫^{}^{}\gamma _{𝐫^{\prime \prime }}+\mathrm{c}.\mathrm{c}.].`$
The action (113) exhibits the correct physical properties. The Berry phase term and the modification of the kinetic energy term by spin fluctuations have been discussed in Sec. III B 1. The $`J`$-term describes AF exchange interactions between neighboring sites $`𝐫,𝐫^{}`$. It vanishes as soon as a hole is present at site $`𝐫`$ or $`𝐫^{}`$. The three-site term is also familiar from the derivation of the $`t`$-$`J`$ model.

#### 3 Relation with other formalisms

In this section, we show that the action (113) corresponds to the action of the $`t`$-$`J`$ model obtained in the spin-hole coherent-state path integral. We then make the connection with the slave-fermion formalism.

We first perform a particle-hole transformation: $`\gamma _𝐫h_𝐫^{}`$, $`\gamma _𝐫^{}h_𝐫`$. The action (113) then becomes

$`S_{\mathrm{LHB}}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{𝐫}{}}{\displaystyle 𝑑\tau [h_𝐫^{}(_\tau \mu _h)h_𝐫+A_{𝐫z}^0(1h_𝐫^{}h_𝐫)]}`$ (118)
$`+{\displaystyle \frac{t}{\sqrt{2}}}{\displaystyle \underset{𝐫,𝐫^{}}{}}{\displaystyle }d\tau (1+𝛀_𝐫𝛀_𝐫^{})^{1/2}[h_𝐫^{}h_𝐫^{}e^{i\mathrm{\Phi }_{𝐫,𝐫^{}}/2}+\mathrm{c}.\mathrm{c}.]`$
$`+J{\displaystyle \underset{𝐫,𝐫^{}}{}}{\displaystyle 𝑑\tau \left(\frac{𝛀_𝐫𝛀_𝐫^{}}{4}\frac{1}{4}\right)(1h_𝐫^{}h_𝐫)(1h_𝐫^{}^{}h_𝐫^{})}`$
$`+{\displaystyle \frac{t^2}{2U}}{\displaystyle \underset{𝐫^{},𝐫,𝐫^{\prime \prime }}{}}{\displaystyle 𝑑\tau (1𝛀_𝐫𝛀_𝐫^{})^{1/2}(1𝛀_𝐫𝛀_{𝐫^{\prime \prime }})^{1/2}}`$
$`\times [e^{i(\mathrm{\Phi }_{𝐫,𝐫^{}}^{}\mathrm{\Phi }_{𝐫,𝐫^{\prime \prime }}^{})/2}(1h_𝐫^{}h_𝐫)h_{𝐫^{\prime \prime }}^{}h_𝐫^{}+\mathrm{c}.\mathrm{c}.].`$
where $`\mu _h=\mu `$ is the chemical potential of the holes. The action (118) is precisely the action of the $`t`$-$`J`$ model in the spin-hole coherent-state path integral. Note that the three-site term (the so-called “pair-hopping” term, last term of the rhs of Eq. (118)) is usually omitted in the $`t`$-$`J`$ model.

The rotation matrices $`R_𝐫`$ are elements of SU(2)/U(1). Instead of integrating over this manifold in the functional integral, one can choose to integrate over all SU(2) matrices (with the properly normalized integration measure), i.e. one writes

$$R_𝐫=\left(\begin{array}{cc}z_{1𝐫}& z_{2𝐫}^{}\\ z_{2𝐫}& z_{1𝐫}^{}\end{array}\right),$$
(119)
with the constraints

$$|z_{1𝐫}^2|+|z_{2𝐫}^2|=1.$$
(120)
Writing $`z_𝐫=(z_{1𝐫},z_{2𝐫})^T`$, one then has

$`𝛀_𝐫=z_𝐫^{}𝝈z_𝐫,`$ (121)
$`A_{𝐫z}^0={\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}(z_𝐫^{}\dot{z}_𝐫\dot{z}_𝐫^{}z_𝐫),`$ (122)
$`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}}(1+𝛀_𝐫𝛀_𝐫^{})^{1/2}e^{i\mathrm{\Phi }_{𝐫,𝐫^{}}/2}=z_𝐫^{}z_𝐫^{}.`$ (123)
Note that we have written $`A_z^0`$ in a symmetric way. Introducing new variables (Schwinger bosons) defined by

$$b_𝐫=z_𝐫\left(1\frac{1}{2}h_𝐫^{}h_𝐫\right),$$
(124)
the constraints (120) become

$$|b_{1𝐫}^2|+|b_{2𝐫}^2|+h_𝐫^{}h_𝐫=1,$$
(125)
and the action reads

$`S_{\mathrm{LHB}}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{𝐫}{}}{\displaystyle }d\tau [h_𝐫^{}(_\tau \mu _h)h_𝐫+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}(b_𝐫^{}\dot{b}_𝐫\dot{b}_𝐫^{}b_𝐫)]+t{\displaystyle \underset{𝐫,𝐫^{}}{}}{\displaystyle }d\tau [b_𝐫^{}^{}b_𝐫h_𝐫^{}h_𝐫^{}+\mathrm{c}.\mathrm{c}.]`$ (127)
$`+{\displaystyle \frac{J}{4}}{\displaystyle \underset{𝐫,𝐫^{}}{}}{\displaystyle 𝑑\tau [b_𝐫^{}𝝈b_𝐫b_𝐫^{}^{}𝝈b_𝐫^{}(1h_𝐫^{}h_𝐫)(1h_𝐫^{}^{}h_𝐫^{})]},`$
where, for simplicity, we have omitted the “pair-hopping” term. The action (127), together with the constraints (125), is the action of the $`t`$-$`J`$ model in the slave-fermion formalism \[see, for instance, Ref. \].

## IV Conclusion

We have reconsidered the strong-coupling expansion for the Hubbard model introduced by Sarker and Pairault et al. The main modification is twofold. (i) We introduce two different fermionic fields, $`\gamma _+`$ and $`\gamma _{}`$, which correspond to particles in the UHB and LHB, respectively (Sec. II). (ii) We organize the strong-coupling expansion around a “non-degenerate” ground-state where each singly-occupied atomic state has a well defined spin direction (which may fluctuate in time) (Sec. III). The action of the system, $`S[\gamma ^{},\gamma ;𝛀]`$, is then expressed in terms of two fermionic fields, $`\gamma _{}`$ and $`\gamma _+`$, and a unit vector field $`𝛀_𝐫`$. $`\gamma _{}`$ and $`\gamma _+`$ correspond to particles in the LHB and UHB, respectively, the local spin-quantization axis being specified by the time-fluctuating unit vector field $`𝛀_𝐫`$. As in Ref. , the strong-coupling expansion is carried out by introducing a fermionic auxiliary field $`\psi (\psi _{},\psi _+)^T`$ and performing a Grassmannian Hubbard-Stratonovich transformation of the intersite hopping term.

Compared to the formalism discussed in Ref. , our work brings two major improvements. (i) The expansion involves a single dimensionless parameter, $`t/U`$, and therefore does not break down at low temperature. In the limit $`U\mathrm{}`$, the action $`S[\gamma ^{},\gamma ;𝛀]`$ becomes Gaussian (Sec. III B 1). At finite $`U`$, the corrections to the Gaussian action can be obtained perturbatively by considering a finite number of vertices. (ii) By introducing a fluctuating spin-quantization axis, we have effectively suppressed the huge spin degeneracy of the atomic ground-state. Indeed, for a given configuration of $`𝛀_𝐫`$, we now expand around a “non-degenerate” atomic state, where each singly-occupied site carries a well defined spin ($`𝛀_𝐫/2`$).

This formalism allowed us to recover the action of the $`t`$-$`J`$ model in the spin-hole coherent-state path integral. It can also be used to directly study the Hubbard model. It is clear that the main technical difficulty comes from the spin variables $`𝛀_𝐫`$, since the fermionic fields $`\gamma _{}`$ and $`\gamma _+`$ can be integrated out in a systematic $`t/U`$ expansion. Thus further progress is tied to an approximate treatment of spin fluctuations. The simplest approach consists in expanding around a broken-symmetry ground-state by making a saddle-point approximation on the spin variables $`𝛀_𝐫`$. In the half-filled Hubbard model, a natural choice is $`𝛀_𝐫=(1)^𝐫\widehat{𝐳}`$, which corresponds to an AF ground-state. Other choices, such as ferromagnetic or spiral orders, are also possible. Work along these lines will be reported elsewhere.

## Acknowledgment

N.D. wishes to thank the CRPS and the Department of Physics of the university of Sherbrooke for hospitality.

## A

In this Appendix, we show how we can obtain the atomic Green’s functions projected on empty, singly occupied, and doubly occupied sites. One could directly use the slave boson formulation by explicitly integrating over the fields $`f,e,p,d`$ and the Lagrange multipliers $`\lambda `$. This is the method used in Appendix C. Here we present a different (and more direct) approach. We consider a single site and drop the site index.

In the basis $`\{|0,|,|,|\}`$, the operators $`\widehat{\gamma }_{\alpha \sigma }`$ are given by (in matrix form):

$`\widehat{\gamma }_+=\left(\begin{array}{cccc}0& 0& 0& 0\\ 0& 0& 0& 0\\ 0& 0& 0& 1\\ 0& 0& 0& 0\end{array}\right),`$ $`\widehat{\gamma }_+=\left(\begin{array}{cccc}0& 0& 0& 0\\ 0& 0& 0& 1\\ 0& 0& 0& 0\\ 0& 0& 0& 0\end{array}\right),`$ (A9)
$`\widehat{\gamma }_{}=\left(\begin{array}{cccc}0& 1& 0& 0\\ 0& 0& 0& 0\\ 0& 0& 0& 0\\ 0& 0& 0& 0\end{array}\right),`$ $`\widehat{\gamma }_{}=\left(\begin{array}{cccc}0& 0& 1& 0\\ 0& 0& 0& 0\\ 0& 0& 0& 0\\ 0& 0& 0& 0\end{array}\right).`$ (A18)
From the equations of motion, we then deduce

$`\widehat{\gamma }_{+\sigma }(\tau )=e^{(\mu U)\tau }\widehat{\gamma }_{+\sigma },`$ $`\widehat{\gamma }_{+\sigma }^{}(\tau )=e^{(\mu U)\tau }\widehat{\gamma }_{+\sigma }^{},`$ (A19)
$`\widehat{\gamma }_\sigma (\tau )=e^{\mu \tau }\widehat{\gamma }_\sigma ,`$ $`\widehat{\gamma }_\sigma ^{}(\tau )=e^{\mu \tau }\widehat{\gamma }_\sigma ^{},`$ (A20)
where $`\widehat{\gamma }_{\alpha \sigma }^{()}(\tau )=U(\tau )\widehat{\gamma }_{\alpha \sigma }^{()}U(\tau )`$, and

$$U(\tau )=e^{\tau (H\mu N)}=\left(\begin{array}{cccc}1& 0& 0& 0\\ 0& e^{\mu \tau }& 0& 0\\ 0& 0& e^{\mu \tau }& 0\\ 0& 0& 0& e^{(2\mu U)\tau }\end{array}\right).$$
(A21)
Using (A18) and (A21), it is straightforward to calculate the Green’s functions. For the single-particle Green’s function, we find (for $`\tau >0`$)

$`G_\sigma (\tau )`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{z}}\mathrm{Tr}[U(\beta )\widehat{\gamma }_\sigma (\tau )\widehat{\gamma }_\sigma ^{}(0)]={\displaystyle \frac{e^{\mu \tau }}{z}},`$ (A22)
$`G_{+\sigma }(\tau )`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{z}}\mathrm{Tr}[U(\beta )\widehat{\gamma }_{+\sigma }(\tau )\widehat{\gamma }_{+\sigma }^{}(0)]={\displaystyle \frac{e^{(\mu U)\tau +\beta \mu }}{z}},`$ (A23)
where

$$z=\mathrm{Tr}U(\beta )=1+2e^{\beta \mu }+e^{\beta (2\mu U)}$$
(A24)
is the partition function of a single site. In Fourier space, we obtain

$`G_\sigma (i\omega )`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1n_{\overline{\sigma }}}{i\omega +\mu }},`$ (A25)
$`G_{+\sigma }(i\omega )`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{n_{\overline{\sigma }}}{i\omega +\mu U}},`$ (A26)
where

$$n_\sigma =\frac{e^{\beta \mu }+e^{\beta (2\mu U)}}{z}$$
(A27)
is the mean number of $`\sigma `$-spin particles per site. The method is straightforwardly extended to the calculation of higher-order Green’s functions.

## B

In this Appendix we derive the spin-rotation-invariant action given by Eqs. (45) and (46).

In order to derive the functional integral, we introduce the mixed fermion-boson coherent states $`|\zeta |f,e,p,d`$ defined by

$$|\zeta =\mathrm{exp}\left\{\underset{𝐫}{}\left[\underset{\sigma }{}f_{𝐫\sigma }\widehat{f}_{𝐫\sigma }^{}+e_𝐫\widehat{e}_𝐫^{}+\underset{\sigma }{}p_{𝐫\sigma }\widehat{p}_{𝐫\sigma }^{}+d_𝐫\widehat{d}_𝐫^{}\right]\right\}|\mathrm{vac},$$
(B1)
where $`f_{𝐫\sigma }`$ is a Grassmann variable, and $`e_𝐫`$, $`p_{𝐫\sigma }`$ and $`d_𝐫`$ are c-numbers. In Eq. (B1), the spin-quantization axis is determined by the unit vector $`𝛀_𝐫`$. The coherent states $`|\zeta `$ satisfy the closure relation ($`I`$ is the unit operator)

$$𝑑\zeta ^{}𝑑\zeta e^{|\zeta |^2}|\zeta \zeta |P=I,$$
(B2)
where

$`|\zeta |^2`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{𝐫}{}}\left\{{\displaystyle \underset{\sigma }{}}f_{𝐫\sigma }^{}f_{𝐫\sigma }+e_𝐫^{}e_𝐫+{\displaystyle \underset{\sigma }{}}p_{𝐫\sigma }^{}p_{𝐫\sigma }+d_𝐫^{}d_𝐫\right\},`$ (B3)
$`{\displaystyle 𝑑\zeta ^{}𝑑\zeta }`$ $`=`$ $`𝒩{\displaystyle \underset{𝐫}{}\left[de_𝐫^{}de_𝐫dd_𝐫^{}dd_𝐫\underset{\sigma }{}(df_{𝐫\sigma }^{}df_{𝐫\sigma }dp_{𝐫\sigma }^{}dp_{𝐫\sigma })\right]},`$ (B4)
and $`𝒩`$ is a normalization constant.

$$P=\underset{𝐫}{}\left(\delta _{Q_𝐫^{(1)},0}\underset{\sigma }{}\delta _{Q_{𝐫\sigma }^{(2)},0}\right)$$
(B5)
is a projection operator which ensures that the closure relation acts only in the physical Hilbert space. The partition function is written as

$$Z=𝑑\zeta ^{}𝑑\zeta e^{|\zeta |^2}\stackrel{~}{\zeta }|Pe^{\beta (H\mu N)}|\zeta ,$$
(B6)
where $`\stackrel{~}{\zeta }|=f,e,p,d|`$. Splitting $`\beta `$ into $`M`$ intervals of width $`ϵ=\beta /M`$ as in Eq. (42), and introducing (M-1) times the closure relation (B2), we obtain

$$Z=\underset{k=1}{\overset{M}{}}d\zeta _k^{}d\zeta _ke^{_{k=1}^M|\zeta _k|^2}\underset{k=1}{\overset{M}{}}\zeta _k|P_ke^{ϵ(H\mu N)}|\zeta _{k1},$$
(B7)
with the boundary conditions $`f_{𝐫\sigma ,M}=f_{𝐫\sigma ,0}`$, $`e_{𝐫,M}=e_{𝐫,0}`$, $`p_{𝐫\sigma ,M}=p_{𝐫\sigma ,0}`$, and $`d_{𝐫,M}=d_{𝐫,0}`$. The spin-quantization axis $`𝛀_{𝐫,k}`$ at a given site, defined by $`R_{𝐫,k}\sigma _zR_{𝐫,k}^{}=𝝈𝛀_{𝐫,k}`$, may depend on the “time” $`k`$ (but satisfies the boundary condition $`𝛀_{𝐫,M}=𝛀_{𝐫,0}`$). The projection operator $`P_k`$ can be written as

$$P_k=\underset{𝐫}{}\left(_0^{\frac{2\pi }{ϵ}}\frac{ϵd\lambda _{𝐫,k}^{(1)}}{2\pi }e^{iϵ\lambda _{𝐫,k}^{(1)}Q_{𝐫,k}^{(1)}}\underset{\sigma }{}_0^{\frac{2\pi }{ϵ}}\frac{ϵd\lambda _{𝐫\sigma ,k}^{(2)}}{2\pi }e^{iϵ\lambda _{𝐫\sigma ,k}^{(2)}Q_{𝐫\sigma ,k}^{(2)}}\right).$$
(B8)
Note that the operators $`P_k`$, $`Q_{𝐫,k}^{(1)}`$, and $`Q_{𝐫\sigma ,k}^{(2)}`$ are defined with respect to the spin-quantization axis $`𝛀_{𝐫,k}`$. Since $`Q_{𝐫,k}^{(1)}`$ and $`Q_{𝐫\sigma ,k}^{(2)}`$ commute with the Hamiltonian $`H\mu N`$, we have

$`Z`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{k=1}{\overset{M}{}}d\zeta _k^{}d\zeta _kd\lambda _ke^{_{k=1}^M|\zeta _k|^2}\underset{k=1}{\overset{M}{}}\zeta _k|e^{ϵK_k}|\zeta _{k1}},`$ (B9)
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{k=1}{\overset{M}{}}d\zeta _k^{}d\zeta _kd\lambda _ke^{_{k=1}^M|\zeta _k|^2}\underset{k=1}{\overset{M}{}}\left\{\zeta _k|\zeta _{k1}e^{ϵK_k(\zeta _k^{},\zeta _{k1})}\right\}}`$ (B10)
in the limit $`ϵ0`$. We use the notations

$`{\displaystyle 𝑑\lambda _k}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{𝐫}{}\left(\frac{ϵd\lambda _{𝐫,k}^{(1)}}{2\pi }\underset{\sigma }{}\frac{ϵd\lambda _{𝐫\sigma ,k}^{(2)}}{2\pi }\right)},`$ (B11)
$`K_k`$ $`=`$ $`H\mu N+i{\displaystyle \underset{𝐫}{}}(\lambda _{𝐫,k}^{(1)}Q_{𝐫,k}^{(1)}+{\displaystyle \underset{\sigma }{}}\lambda _{𝐫\sigma ,k}^{(2)}Q_{𝐫\sigma ,k}^{(2)}),`$ (B12)
$`K_k(\zeta _k^{},\zeta _{k1})`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\zeta _k|K_k|\zeta _{k1}}{\zeta _k|\zeta _{k1}}}.`$ (B13)
The only difference with the standard derivation of the functional integral for a mixed fermion-boson system comes from the evaluation of the scalar product $`\zeta _k|\zeta _{k1}`$. If $`R_{𝐫,k}=R_{𝐫,k1}`$ at each lattice site, we have the usual result

$$\zeta _k|\zeta _{k1}=\mathrm{exp}\{\underset{r}{}[\underset{\sigma }{}f_{𝐫\sigma ,k}^{}f_{𝐫\sigma ,k1}+e_{𝐫,k}^{}e_{𝐫,k1}+\underset{\sigma }{}p_{𝐫\sigma ,k}^{}p_{𝐫\sigma ,k1}+d_{𝐫,k}^{}d_{𝐫,k1}]\},$$
(B14)
since the spin-quantization is the same at “times” $`k`$ and $`k1`$. In the more general situation where the spin-quantization may fluctuate in time, we rewrite the coherent state $`|\zeta _k`$ as

$`|\zeta _k`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{𝐫}{}}\left\{e_{𝐫,k}\widehat{e}_{𝐫,k}^{}{\displaystyle \underset{\sigma }{}}f_{𝐫\sigma ,k}\widehat{f}_{𝐫\sigma ,k}^{}p_{𝐫\sigma ,k}\widehat{p}_{𝐫\sigma ,k}^{}f_{𝐫,k}f_{𝐫,k}\widehat{f}_{𝐫,k}^{}\widehat{f}_{𝐫,k}^{}d_{𝐫,k}\widehat{d}_{𝐫,k}^{}\right\}|\mathrm{vac}`$ (B15)
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{𝐫}{}}\{e_{𝐫,k}|0,𝐫{\displaystyle \underset{\sigma }{}}f_{𝐫\sigma ,k}p_{𝐫\sigma ,k}|\sigma ,𝐫,kf_{𝐫,k}f_{𝐫,k}d_{𝐫,k}|,𝐫\},`$ (B16)
using the constraints (6). $`|0,𝐫`$, $`|\sigma ,𝐫,k`$, and $`|,𝐫`$ denote the empty, singly occupied, and doubly occupied states, respectively \[see Eq. (4)\]. The singly occupied state $`|\sigma ,𝐫,k`$ depends on the “time” $`k`$ since the particle has its spin quantized along the $`𝛀_{𝐫,k}`$-axis. From Eq. (B16), we deduce

$`\zeta _k|\zeta _{k1}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{𝐫}{}}\{e_{𝐫,k}^{}e_{𝐫,k1}+{\displaystyle \underset{\sigma ,\sigma ^{}}{}}f_{𝐫\sigma ,k}^{}p_{𝐫\sigma ,k}^{}f_{𝐫\sigma ^{},k1}p_{𝐫\sigma ^{},k1}\sigma ,𝐫,k|\sigma ^{},𝐫,k1`$ (B18)
$`+f_{𝐫,k}^{}f_{𝐫,k}^{}f_{𝐫,k1}f_{𝐫,k1}d_{𝐫,k}^{}d_{𝐫,k1}\}.`$
When $`𝛀_{𝐫,k}=𝛀_{𝐫,k1}`$, $`\sigma ,𝐫,k|\sigma ^{},𝐫,k1=\delta _{\sigma ,\sigma ^{}}`$. Eq. (B18) is then equivalent to Eq. (B14). \[This equivalence is due to the constraints (6).\] For $`𝛀_{𝐫,k}𝛀_{𝐫,k1}`$, this allows to rewrite Eq. (B18) as

$`\zeta _k|\zeta _{k1}`$ $`=`$ $`\mathrm{exp}\{{\displaystyle \underset{r}{}}[{\displaystyle \underset{\sigma }{}}f_{𝐫\sigma ,k}^{}f_{𝐫\sigma ,k1}+e_{𝐫,k}^{}e_{𝐫,k1}+{\displaystyle \underset{\sigma }{}}p_{𝐫\sigma ,k}^{}p_{𝐫\sigma ,k1}+d_{𝐫,k}^{}d_{𝐫,k1}`$ (B20)
$`+{\displaystyle \underset{\sigma ,\sigma ^{}}{}}f_{𝐫\sigma ,k}^{}p_{𝐫\sigma ,k}^{}f_{𝐫\sigma ^{},k1}p_{𝐫\sigma ^{},k1}((R_{𝐫,k}^{}R_{𝐫,k1})_{\sigma \sigma ^{}}\delta _{\sigma ,\sigma ^{}})\left]\right\},`$
where we have used $`\sigma ,𝐫,k|\sigma ^{},𝐫,k1=(R_{𝐫,k}^{}R_{𝐫,k1})_{\sigma \sigma ^{}}`$. Thus we may write the partition function $`Z`$ as

$`Z`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle }{\displaystyle \underset{k=1}{\overset{M}{}}}d\zeta _k^{}d\zeta _kd\lambda _k\mathrm{exp}\{{\displaystyle \underset{k=1}{\overset{M}{}}}{\displaystyle \underset{𝐫}{}}[{\displaystyle \underset{\sigma }{}}f_{𝐫\sigma ,k}^{}(f_{𝐫\sigma ,k}f_{𝐫\sigma ,k1})+e_{𝐫,k}^{}(e_{𝐫,k}e_{𝐫,k1})`$ (B23)
$`+{\displaystyle \underset{\sigma }{}}p_{𝐫\sigma ,k}^{}(p_{𝐫\sigma ,k}p_{𝐫\sigma ,k1})+d_{𝐫,k}^{}(d_{𝐫,k}d_{𝐫,k1})`$
$`{\displaystyle \underset{\sigma ,\sigma ^{}}{}}f_{𝐫\sigma ,k}^{}p_{𝐫\sigma ,k}^{}f_{𝐫\sigma ^{},k1}p_{𝐫\sigma ^{},k1}((R_{𝐫,k}^{}R_{𝐫,k1})_{\sigma \sigma ^{}}\delta _{\sigma ,\sigma ^{}})]ϵ{\displaystyle \underset{k=1}{\overset{M}{}}}K_k(\zeta _k^{},\zeta _{k1})\}.`$
Spin-rotation invariance is obtained by summing over all possible configurations of the unit vector $`𝛀_{𝐫,k}`$, i.e.

$$Z\underset{𝐫}{}\underset{k=1}{\overset{M}{}}\frac{d𝛀_{𝐫,k}}{4\pi }Z.$$
(B24)
When taking the continuum limit, one has to evaluate $`K_k(\zeta _k^{},\zeta _k)`$ (instead of $`K_k(\zeta _k^{},\zeta _{k1})`$). Since all the operators involved in that quantity are defined with respect to the same spin-quantization axis (one can choose the axis $`𝛀_{𝐫,k}`$ to express the Hamiltonian $`H\mu N`$), $`K_k(\zeta _k^{},\zeta _k)`$ is readily calculated. We finally obtain

$$Z=𝒟𝛀𝒟\lambda 𝒟[f,e,p,d]e^S,$$
(B25)
where the action $`S`$ is given by

$`S`$ $`=`$ $`S_{\mathrm{at}}{\displaystyle \underset{𝐫,𝐫^{},\alpha ,\alpha ^{}}{}}{\displaystyle 𝑑\tau \gamma _{𝐫\alpha }^{}R_𝐫^{}t_{\mathrm{𝐫𝐫}^{}}R_𝐫^{}\gamma _{𝐫^{}\alpha ^{}}},`$ (B26)
$`S_{\mathrm{at}}`$ $`=`$ $`S_{\mathrm{at}}^{(0)}+{\displaystyle \underset{𝐫,\sigma ,\sigma ^{}}{}}{\displaystyle 𝑑\tau f_{𝐫\sigma }^{}p_{𝐫\sigma }^{}(R_𝐫^{}\dot{R}_𝐫)_{\sigma \sigma ^{}}f_{𝐫\sigma ^{}}p_{𝐫\sigma ^{}}},`$ (B27)
$`S_{\mathrm{at}}^{(0)}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{𝐫}{}}{\displaystyle }d\tau [i\lambda _𝐫^{(1)}+{\displaystyle \underset{\sigma }{}}f_{𝐫\sigma }^{}(_\tau \mu +i\lambda _{𝐫\sigma }^{(2)})f_{𝐫\sigma }+e_𝐫^{}(_\tau +i\lambda _𝐫^{(1)})e_𝐫`$ (B29)
$`+{\displaystyle \underset{\sigma }{}}p_{𝐫\sigma }^{}(_\tau +i\lambda _𝐫^{(1)}i\lambda _{𝐫\sigma }^{(2)})p_{𝐫\sigma }+d_𝐫^{}(_\tau +i\lambda _𝐫^{(1)}i{\displaystyle \underset{\sigma }{}}\lambda _{𝐫\sigma }^{(2)}+U)d_𝐫].`$
The variables $`\gamma `$ are defined in Sec. III. It is well known that in the standard slave boson approach, the Lagrange multipliers can be chosen to be time independent since the constraints are preserved under time evolution. The action $`S`$ \[Eqs. (B26-B29)\] differs from the standard action by the additional term proportional to $`R^{}\dot{R}`$ which comes from time fluctuations of the spin-quantization axis. This term conserves the total number of $`p`$ bosons and therefore the constraints $`Q_𝐫^{(1)}`$. It is also clear that it lets the combination $`f_{𝐫\sigma }^{}f_{𝐫\sigma }p_{𝐫\sigma }^{}p_{𝐫\sigma }`$ invariant, so that the constraints $`Q_{𝐫\sigma }^{(2)}`$ are also conserved. Consequently, we can replace the functional integral over $`\lambda (\tau )`$ in Eq. (B25) by an integral over a set $`\lambda (\lambda _𝐫^{(1)},\lambda _{𝐫\sigma }^{(2)})`$ of time-independent Lagrange multipliers:

$$𝒟\lambda 𝑑\lambda \underset{𝐫}{}\left(_0^{\frac{2\pi }{\beta }}\frac{\beta d\lambda _𝐫^{(1)}}{2\pi }\underset{\sigma }{}_0^{\frac{2\pi }{\beta }}\frac{\beta d\lambda _{𝐫\sigma }^{(2)}}{2\pi }\right).$$
(B30)
Note that the introduction of time-dependent Lagrange multipliers at an intermediate stage is what allows a simple evaluation of $`K_k(\zeta _k^{},\zeta _{k1})`$. To avoid this complication, one would have to consider the $`p`$ operators as $`2\times 2`$ matrices in spin space.

## C

In this Appendix, we calculate the single-particle Green’s functions $`G_\sigma ^{(0)}(\tau )`$ and $`G_\sigma (\tau )`$ corresponding to the action $`S_{\mathrm{at}}^{(0)}`$ and $`S_{\mathrm{at}}`$, respectively \[Eqs. (50)\].

$`G_\sigma ^{(0)}(\tau )`$ and $`G_\sigma (\tau )`$ are obtained directly from their expressions in terms of the fields $`f_\sigma ,e,p_{}`$ and $`d`$. As discussed in Sec. III, the chemical potential $`\mu `$ equals $`U/2`$ at half-filling and lies near the top of the LHB in the presence of a finite concentration of holes. The ground-state of the system in the atomic limit then has exactly one particle per site (even away from half-filling). We consider a single site and drop the site index.

Let us first consider $`G_\sigma ^{(0)}(\tau )`$. It can be written as

$`G_{}^{(0)}(\tau )`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{z^{(0)}}}{\displaystyle 𝑑\lambda 𝒟[f,e,p,d]e^{}(\tau )p_{}(\tau )f_{}(\tau )f_{}^{}(0)p_{}^{}(0)e(0)\mathrm{exp}\left\{S_{\mathrm{at}}^{(0)}\right\}}`$ (C1)
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{z^{(0)}}}{\displaystyle 𝑑\lambda z_\lambda ^{(0)}g_{}^{(0)}(\tau )},`$ (C2)
$`G_{}^{(0)}(\tau )`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{z^{(0)}}}{\displaystyle 𝑑\lambda 𝒟[f,e,p,d]d(\tau )p_{}^{}(\tau )f_{}(\tau )f_{}^{}(0)p_{}(0)d^{}(0)\mathrm{exp}\left\{S_{\mathrm{at}}^{(0)}\right\}}`$ (C3)
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{z^{(0)}}}{\displaystyle 𝑑\lambda z_\lambda ^{(0)}g_{}^{(0)}(\tau )},`$ (C4)
where

$`z_\lambda ^{(0)}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle 𝒟[f,e,p,d]\mathrm{exp}\left\{S_{\mathrm{at}}^{(0)}\right\}},`$ (C5)
$`g_{}^{(0)}(\tau )`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{z_\lambda ^{(0)}}}{\displaystyle 𝒟[f,e,p,d]e^{}(\tau )p_{}(\tau )f_{}(\tau )f_{}^{}(0)p_{}^{}(0)e(0)\mathrm{exp}\left\{S_{\mathrm{at}}^{(0)}\right\}},`$ (C6)
$`g_{}^{(0)}(\tau )`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{z_\lambda ^{(0)}}}{\displaystyle 𝒟[f,e,p,d]d(\tau )p_{}^{}(\tau )f_{}(\tau )f_{}^{}(0)p_{}(0)d^{}(0)\mathrm{exp}\left\{S_{\mathrm{at}}^{(0)}\right\}}`$ (C7)
are the partition function and the Green’s functions for a given configuration of the Lagrange multipliers. $`z^{(0)}=𝑑\lambda z_\lambda ^{(0)}`$ is the partition function for a single site. Since $`S_{\mathrm{at}}^{(0)}`$ is a Gaussian action when $`\lambda `$ is held fixed, we immediately deduce

$`g_{}^{(0)}(\tau )`$ $`=`$ $`g_f_{}(\tau )g_p_{}(\tau )g_e(\tau ),`$ (C8)
$`g_{}^{(0)}(\tau )`$ $`=`$ $`g_f_{}(\tau )g_p_{}(\tau )g_d(\tau ),`$ (C9)
where

$`g_{f_\sigma }(\tau )`$ $`=`$ $`e^{(\mu i\lambda _\sigma ^{(2)})\tau }\left[\theta (\tau )(1F_\sigma )\theta (\tau )F_\sigma \right],`$ (C10)
$`g_e(\tau )`$ $`=`$ $`e^{i\lambda ^{(1)}\tau }\left[\theta (\tau )(1+B)+\theta (\tau )B\right],`$ (C11)
$`g_p_{}(\tau )`$ $`=`$ $`e^{(i\lambda ^{(1)}i\lambda _{}^{(2)})\tau }\left[\theta (\tau )(1+B_{})+\theta (\tau )B_{}\right],`$ (C12)
$`g_d(\tau )`$ $`=`$ $`e^{(i\lambda ^{(1)}i_\sigma \lambda _\sigma ^{(2)}+U)\tau }\left[\theta (\tau )(1+B^{})+\theta (\tau )B^{}\right],`$ (C13)
are the propagators of the fields $`f_\sigma `$, $`e`$, $`p_{}`$ and $`d`$ when the Lagrange multipliers are held fixed. We use the notation

$`F_\sigma `$ $`=`$ $`n_F(\mu +i\lambda _\sigma ^{(2)}),`$ (C14)
$`B_{}`$ $`=`$ $`n_B(i\lambda ^{(1)}i\lambda _{}^{(2)}),`$ (C15)
$`B`$ $`=`$ $`n_B(i\lambda ^{(1)}),`$ (C16)
$`B^{}`$ $`=`$ $`n_B(i\lambda ^{(1)}i{\displaystyle \underset{\sigma }{}}\lambda _\sigma ^{(2)}+U),`$ (C17)
where $`n_F(x)=(e^{\beta x}+1)^1`$ and $`n_B(x)=(e^{\beta x}1)^1`$ are the Fermi and Bose factors, respectively. Using

$$z_\lambda ^{(0)}=\underset{\sigma }{}\left(1+e^{\beta (\mu i\lambda _\sigma ^{(2)})}\right)\left(e^{i\beta \lambda ^{(1)}}+1+e^{i\beta \lambda _{}^{(2)}}+e^{\beta (Ui_\sigma \lambda _\sigma ^{(2)})}\right)+O(e^{i\beta \lambda ^{(1)}}),$$
(C18)
we obtain

$$z^{(0)}=𝑑\lambda z_\lambda ^{(0)}=1+e^{\beta \mu }+e^{\beta (2\mu U)}e^{\beta \mu }$$
(C19)
in the limit $`T0`$. In order to perform the integration over the Lagrange multipliers, we note that

$`B`$ $`=`$ $`e^{i\beta \lambda ^{(1)}}+O(e^{2i\beta \lambda ^{(1)}}),`$ (C20)
$`B^{}`$ $`=`$ $`e^{i\beta \lambda ^{(1)}+i\beta _\sigma \lambda _\sigma ^{(2)}\beta U}+O(e^{2i\beta \lambda ^{(1)}}),`$ (C21)
$`B_{}`$ $`=`$ $`e^{i\beta \lambda ^{(1)}+i\beta \lambda _{}^{(2)}}+O(e^{2i\beta \lambda ^{(1)}}).`$ (C22)
We deduce from Eqs. (C4), (C13) and (C22)

$`G_{}^{(0)}(\tau )`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{e^{\mu \tau }}{z^{(0)}}}\left[\theta (\tau )\theta (\tau )e^{\beta \mu }\right]\theta (\tau +\eta )e^{\mu \tau },`$ (C23)
$`G_{}^{(0)}(\tau )`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{e^{(\mu U)\tau }}{z^{(0)}}}\left[\theta (\tau )e^{\beta \mu }\theta (\tau )e^{\beta (2\mu U)}\right]\theta (\tau \eta )e^{(\mu U)\tau },`$ (C24)
where we have taken the limit $`T0`$. The infinitesimal $`\eta `$ ($`\eta 0^+`$) is introduced to properly define the equal-time Green’s functions.

Let us now consider the correction due to

$$S_{\mathrm{at}}S_{\mathrm{at}}^{(0)}=𝑑\tau A_z^0f_{}^{}p_{}^{}f_{}p_{}.$$
(C25)
Since $`G_\sigma =z^1𝑑\lambda z_\lambda g_\sigma `$, the correction of order $`O(A_z^0)`$ is given by

$$G_\sigma ^{(1)}=\frac{z^{(1)}}{z^{(0)}}G_\sigma ^{(0)}+\frac{1}{z^{(0)}}𝑑\lambda z_\lambda ^{(1)}g_\sigma ^{(0)}+\frac{1}{z^{(0)}}𝑑\lambda z_\lambda ^{(0)}g_\sigma ^{(1)},$$
(C26)
where $`z_\lambda ^{(1)}`$ and $`g_\sigma ^{(1)}`$ are the first-order corrections to $`z_\lambda ^{(0)}`$ and $`g_\sigma ^{(0)}`$. The correction to the partition function is given by

$`z_\lambda ^{(1)}`$ $`=`$ $`z_\lambda ^{(0)}F_{}B_{}{\displaystyle 𝑑\tau A_z^0},`$ (C27)
$`z^{(1)}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle 𝑑\lambda z_\lambda ^{(1)}}=e^{\beta \mu }{\displaystyle 𝑑\tau A_z^0}.`$ (C28)
From (C27), we deduce

$$𝑑\lambda z_\lambda ^{(1)}g_\sigma ^{(0)}=0.$$
(C29)
The first-order corrections to $`g_{}^{(0)}`$ and $`g_{}^{(0)}`$ are shown diagrammatically in Figs. 2 and 3:

$`g_{}^{(1)}(\tau )`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle 𝑑\tau _1A_z^0(\tau _1)g_f_{}(\tau \tau _1)g_f_{}(\tau _1)g_p_{}(\tau \tau _1)g_p_{}(\tau _1)g_e(\tau )}`$ (C32)
$`{\displaystyle 𝑑\tau _1A_z^0(\tau _1)g_f_{}(\tau \tau _1)g_f_{}(\tau _1)g_p_{}(0^{})g_p_{}(\tau )g_e(\tau )}`$
$`+{\displaystyle 𝑑\tau _1A_z^0(\tau _1)g_f_{}(\tau )g_p_{}(\tau \tau _1)g_p_{}(\tau _1)g_f_{}(0^{})g_e(\tau )},`$
$`g_{}^{(1)}(\tau )`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle 𝑑\tau _1A_z^0(\tau _1)g_f_{}(\tau )g_p_{}(\tau +\tau _1)g_f_{}(0^{})g_p_{}(\tau _1)g_d(\tau )}.`$ (C33)
Integrating over the Lagrange multipliers, we obtain

$`{\displaystyle 𝑑\lambda z_\lambda ^{(0)}g_{}^{(1)}}`$ $`=`$ $`e^{\mu \tau }{\displaystyle }d\tau _1A_z^0(\tau _1)\{\theta (\tau )\theta (\tau \tau _1)\theta (\tau _1)`$ (C35)
$`e^{\beta \mu }\theta (\tau )[\theta (\tau \tau _1)\theta (\tau _1)+\theta (\tau +\tau _1)\theta (\tau _1)]\},`$
$`{\displaystyle 𝑑\lambda z_\lambda ^{(0)}g_{}^{(1)}}`$ $`=`$ $`e^{(\mu U)\tau }{\displaystyle }d\tau _1A_z^0(\tau _1)\{e^{\beta \mu }\theta (\tau )[\theta (\tau \tau _1)\theta (\tau _1)+\theta (\tau +\tau _1)\theta (\tau _1)]`$ (C37)
$`e^{\beta (2\mu U)}\theta (\tau )\theta (\tau +\tau _1)\theta (\tau _1)\}.`$
From Eqs. (C28), (C29) and (C37), we finally obtain

$`G_{}^{(1)}(\tau )`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle 𝑑\tau _1G_{}^{(0)}(\tau \tau _1)A_z^0(\tau _1)G_{}^{(0)}(\tau _1)},`$ (C38)
$`G_{}^{(1)}(\tau )`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle 𝑑\tau _1G_{}^{(0)}(\tau \tau _1)A_z^0(\tau _1)G_{}^{(0)}(\tau _1)}`$ (C39)
in the limit $`T0`$. These results are easily extrapolated to higher orders as (in matrix form)

$`G_{}`$ $`=`$ $`G_{}^{(0)}+G_{}^{(0)}A_z^0G_{}^{(0)}+G_{}^{(0)}A_z^0G_{}^{(0)}A_z^0G_{}^{(0)}+\mathrm{}`$ (C40)
$`G_{}`$ $`=`$ $`G_{}^{(0)}G_{}^{(0)}A_z^0G_{}^{(0)}+G_{}^{(0)}A_z^0G_{}^{(0)}A_z^0G_{}^{(0)}\mathrm{}`$ (C41)
or, equivalently,

$`G_{}^1`$ $`=`$ $`G_{}^{(0)1}A_z^0,`$ (C42)
$`G_{}^1`$ $`=`$ $`G_{}^{(0)1}+A_z^0.`$ (C43)
Note that these Green’s functions, like the gauge field $`A_z^0`$, depend on the site which is considered.