The low-energy dynamical optical response of dimerized and undimerized spin liquid states in a one-dimensional charge transfer Mott insulator is theoretically studied. An exact analysis is given for the low-energy asymptotic behavior using conformal field theory for the undimerized state. In the dimerized state, the infrared absorption due to the bound state of two solitons, i.e., the breather mode, is predicted with an accurate estimate for its oscillator strength, offering a way to detect experimentally the excited singlet state. The effects of external magnetic fields are also discussed.
We employ dynamical density-matrix renormalization-group (DDMRG) and field-theory methods to determine the frequency-dependent optical conductivity in one-dimensional extended, half-filled Hubbard models. The field-theory approach is applicable to the regime of ``small'' Mott gaps which is the most difficult to access by DDMRG. For very large Mott gaps the DDMRG recovers analytical results obtained previously by means of strong-coupling techniques. We focus on exciton formation at energies below the onset of the absorption continuum. As a consequence of spin-charge separation, these Mott-Hubbard excitons are bound states of spinless, charged excitations (``holon-antiholon'' pairs). We also determine exciton binding energies and sizes. In contrast to simple band insulators, we observe that excitons exist in the Mott-insulating phase only for a sufficiently strong intersite Coulomb repulsion. Furthermore, our results show that the exciton binding energy and size are not related in a simple way to the strength of the Coulomb interaction.
We employ dynamical density-matrix renormalization-group (DDMRG) and field-theory methods to determine the frequency-dependent optical conductivity in one-dimensional extended. half-filled Hubbard models. The field-theory approach is applicable to the regime of "small" Mott gaps which is the most difficult to access by DDMRG. For very large Mott gaps the DDMRG recovers analytical results obtained previously by means of strong-coupling techniques. We focus on exciton formation at energies below the onset of the absorption continuum. As a consequence of spin-charge separation, these Mott-Hubbard excitons are bound states of spinless, charged excitations ("holon-antiholon" pairs). We also determine exciton binding energies and sizes. In contrast to simple band insulators, we observe that excitons exist in the Mott-insulating phase only for a sufficiently strong intersite Coulomb repulsion. Furthermore, our results show that the exciton binding energy and size are not related in a simple way to the strength of the Coulomb interaction.
We theoretically investigate the light absorption spectrum of two-dimensional (2D) Mott insulators. We employ the numerical diagonalization method to calculate the light absorption spectrum with using the effective Hamiltonian for the extended Hubbard model, which is valid when the on-site Coulomb interaction energy
U is much larger than the nearest-neighbor transfer integral
t and the nearest-neighbor Coulomb interaction energy
V. For
V=0, the absorption spectrum consists of a broad band with a width of about
16t and a sharp central peak, and the energy eigenstates contributing to the absorption spectrum do not have the antiferromagnetic (AF) spin order, when
U is sufficiently larger than
t. These features result from the spin-charge interplay inherent in the very strong correlation region where charge transfer term is dominant. With decreasing
U∕t, the peak structure in absorption spectrum becomes unclear and some low energy eigenstates have the AF spin order, as a result of the spin-spin interaction term. For large
V∕t, the dominant peak arises in the lower energy region of the spectrum. A large number of holon-doublon bound states, which have nearly the same charge but different spin structures, are responsible for this peak, in contrast to the conventional exciton state. This is also in contrast to the charge bound states in one-dimensional (1D) Mott insulators, where a single energy eigenstate dominates the optical transition moment as a result of the spin-charge separation. The essentially different absorption spectra between the 1D and 2D Mott insulators originate from the difference in the coupling between spin and charge degrees of freedom.
The density-matrix renormalization-group (DMRG) method is used to investigate optical excitations in the Mott insulating phase of a one-dimensional extended Hubbard model. The linear optical conductivity is calculated using the dynamical DMRG method and the nature of the lowest optically excited states is investigated using a symmetrized DMRG approach. The numerical calculations agree perfectly with field-theoretical predictions for a small Mott gap and analytical results for a large Mott gap obtained with a strong-coupling analysis. It is shown that four types of optical excitations exist in this Mott insulator: pairs of unbound charge excitations, excitons, excitonic strings, and charge-density-wave (CDW) droplets. Each type of excitation dominates the low-energy optical spectrum in some region of the interaction parameter space and corresponds to distinct spectral features: a continuum starting at the Mott gap (unbound charge excitations), a single peak or several isolated peaks below the Mott gap (excitons and excitonic strings, respectively), and a continuum below the Mott gap (CDW droplets).
We show that charge excitations within one-dimensional extended Hubbard models in the limit of large on-site Coulomb interaction can be mapped onto pairs of spin reversals from the ferromagnetic Ising-Heisenberg spin Hamiltonian. The exciton in the extended Hubbard models is equivalent to the bound two-magnon state of the spin Hamiltonian. From exact results for the spin Hamiltonian, for the intersite Coulomb interactions limited between nearest neighbors, the lowest optical exciton is separated in energy from the electron-hole continuum only for the intersite interaction larger than half the one-electron bandwidth. The commutation relationship between spin operators allows us to numerically investigate exciton binding energies and optical absorptions from the ground state in the limit of large on-site Coulomb interaction even for cases where analytic results are not available. For intersite Coulomb interaction limited between nearest neighbors, the binding energy of the lowest optical exciton changes very weakly for realistic Peierls bond dimerization, although there is a profound change in the optical absorption. While in the undimerized chain a single optical exciton can occur, two additional excitons that occur above the threshold of the electron-hole continuum become optically visible in the dimerized case. For long-range intersite Coulomb interactions, multiple excitons can occur even for the undimerized chain, and additional exciton states become optically visible upon dimerization. With the
1/r form for the intersite Coulomb interaction, our numerical calculations suggest that the formation of at least one optical exciton is unconditional, unlike the case of nearest-neighbor interaction. The binding energy of the lowest optical exciton again depends weakly on the dimerization for long-range interaction. Our theoretical results can explain the occurrence of two charge-transfer absorption bands in half-filled band segregated stack charge transfer solids below the spin-Peierls dimerization temperature. Our results also suggest that the lowest optical state of \ensuremath{\pi}-conjugated polymers, in which Coulomb interactions are long ranged, is necessarily an exciton.