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Antiferromagnetic, metal-insulator, and superconducting phase transitions in underdoped cuprates: Slave-fermion t-J model in the hopping expansion

In the present paper, we study a system of doped antiferromagnet in three dimensions at finite temperatures by using the t-J model, a canonical model of strongly-correlated electrons. We employ the slave-fermion representation of electrons in which an electron is described as a composite of a charged spinless holon and a chargeless spinon. We introduce two kinds of U(1) gauge fields on links as auxiliary fields, one describing resonating valence bonds of antiferromagnetic nearest-neighbor spin pairs and the other for nearest-neighbor hopping amplitudes of holons and spinons in the ferromagnetic channel. In order to perform numerical study of the system, we integrate out the fermionic holon field by using the hopping expansion in powers of the hopping amplitude, which is legitimate for the region in and near the insulating phase. The resultant effective model is described in terms of bosonic spinons and the two U(1) gauge fields, and a collective field for hole pairs. We study this model by means of Monte-Carlo simulations, calculating the specific heat, spin correlation functions, and instanton densities. We obtain a phase diagram in the hole concentration-temperature plane, which is in good agreement with that observed recently for clean and homogeneous underdoped samples.