Challenges
Datasets
Workspaces
Papers
Discussions
Leaderboard
Log inSign up
Challenges
Datasets
Workspaces
Papers
Discussions
Leaderboard
Blog
Job Board
Q3AS

© 2026 Aqora Quantum S.A.S.

TermsPrivacyLegal Notice

arXiv:2001.05509 · Physical review. B./Physical review. B

Parton theory of angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy spectra in antiferromagnetic Mott insulators

Annabelle Bohrdt, Eugene Demler, Frank Pollmann, Michael Knap, Fabian Grusdt

Published Jul 21, 2020• 56 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) has revealed peculiar properties of mobile dopants in correlated antiferromagnets (AFMs). But, describing them theoretically, even in simplified toy models, remains a challenge. Here, we study ARPES spectra of a single mobile hole in the $t\ensuremath{-}J$ model. Recent progress in the microscopic description of mobile dopants allows us to use a geometric decoupling of spin and charge fluctuations at strong couplings, from which we conjecture a one-to-one relation of the one-dopant spectral function and the spectrum of a constituting spinon in the undoped parent AFM. We thoroughly test this hypothesis for a single hole doped into a two-dimensional Heisenberg AFM by comparing our semianalytical predictions to previous quantum Monte Carlo results and our large-scale time-dependent matrix product state calculations of the spectral function. Our conclusion is supported by a microscopic trial wave function describing spinon-chargon bound states, which captures the momentum and $t/J$ dependence of the quasiparticle residue. From our conjecture we speculate that ARPES measurements in the pseudogap phase of cuprates may directly reveal the Dirac-fermion nature of the constituting spinons. Specifically, we demonstrate that our trial wave function provides a microscopic explanation for the sudden drop of spectral weight around the nodal point associated with the formation of Fermi arcs, assuming that additional frustration suppresses long-range AFM ordering. We benchmark our results by studying the crossover from two to one dimension, where spinons and chargons are confined and deconfined, respectively.

DOI
10.1103/physrevb.102.035139

Related papers

Rotational Resonances and Regge-like Trajectories in Lightly Doped Antiferromagnets

Annabelle Bohrdt, Eugene Demler, F. Grusdt

Understanding the nature of charge carriers in doped Mott insulators holds the key to unravelling puzzling properties of strongly correlated electron systems, including cuprate superconductors. Several theoretical models suggested that dopants can be understood as bound states of partons, the analogues of quarks in high-energy physics. However, direct signatures of spinon-chargon bound states are lacking, both in experiment and theory. Here we propose a rotational variant of angle-resolved photo-emission spectroscopy (ARPES) and calculate rotational spectra numerically using the density-matrix renormalization group. We identify long-lived rotational resonances for an individual dopant, which we interpret as a direct indicator of the microscopic structure of spinon-chargon bound states. Similar to Regge trajectories reflecting the quark structure of mesons, we establish a linear dependence of the rotational energy on the superexchange coupling. The rotational peaks we find are strongly suppressed in standard ARPES spectra, but we suggest a multiphoton extension of ARPES which allows us to access rotational spectra. Our findings suggest that multiphoton spectroscopy experiments should provide new insights into emergent universal features of strongly correlated electron systems.

arXiv:2101.09280•Physical Review Letters•Nov 5, 2021•20 citations

Quasiparticle description of angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy for SrCuO2

Dimitar L. Pashov, Casey Eichstaedt, Swagata Acharya +1 more

SrCuO 2 has long been considered a near-archetypal realization of a quasi-one-dimensional (1D) system of interacting electrons with short-range interactions. Within this framework, experimental observations — interpreted through the lens of the 1D Hubbard model — suggest that electron and hole excitations decay into two types of (unphysical) collective bosonic modes: “spinons”, which carry the spin degree of freedom, and “holons, which carry the charge degree of freedom. This model, known as spin-charge separation, is most directly evidenced by angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES), where a photo-induced hole decays into a continuum of these excitations. Here we present an alternative perspective grounded in first-principles, self-consistent, and parameter-free many-body perturbation theory. In this revised quasiparticle framework, ARPES can be understood as a one-body effect arising from mild disorder in a long-range antiferromagnetic ground state. the emergence of the so-called spinon branch arises naturally from spin disorder, the anomalous linewidths are accurately captured, and we provide a compelling explanation for the spectral weight observed at the non-magnetic zone boundary. This reinterpretation provides a unified explanation for key experimental signatures previously attributed to spin-charge separation, including features observed in optical conductivity. Additionally, we show that SrCuO 2 exhibits a nontrivial interchain coupling that significantly influences both its one-particle and two-particle spectral functions. By comparing the spectral features of SrCuO 2 with those of La 2 CuO 4 , we argue that SrCuO 2 shares notable similarities with the two-dimensional cuprates—both being rooted in a common CuO 4 plaquette-based molecular orbital framework.

arXiv:2510.06693•Computational Materials Today•Oct 11, 2025•2 citations

Angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy with quantum gas microscopes

Annabelle Bohrdt, Daniel Greif, Eugene Demler +2 more

Quantum gas microscopes are a promising tool to study interacting quantum many-body systems and bridge the gap between theoretical models and real materials. One of the most powerful experimental methods in solids is angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES), which measures the single-particle spectral function. The authors propose a measurement scheme to experimentally access the momentum- and energy-resolved spectral function in a quantum gas microscope. As an example for possible applications, the spectrum of a single hole excitation in one-dimensional $t$-$J$ models is calculated and analyzed. A sharp asymmetry in the distribution of spectral weight, reminiscent of the Fermi arcs observed in the pseudogap phase of cuprates, appears in the case of an isotropic Heisenberg spin chain.

arXiv:1710.08925•Physical review. B./Physical review. B•Mar 13, 2018•66 citations

Composite structure of single-particle spectral function in lightly-doped Mott insulators

Jingyu Zhao, Zheng-Yu Weng

The internal structure of doped holes in the Mott insulator may provide important insight into the physics of doped cuprates. Its observability via a single-particle probe by scanning tunneling spectroscopy (STS) and angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) is explored in this paper. Specifically, we study the single-particle spectral function based on a two-hole variational ground-state wave function [J.-Y. Zhao et al., Phys. Rev. X 12, 011062 (2022)] in the $t\text{\ensuremath{-}}J$ model. The latter as a strongly correlated state possesses a dichotomy of $d$-wave Cooper pairing and $s$-wave ``twisted'' hole pairing. This pairing structure will give rise to two branches of local spectral function at finite energies. The low-lying one corresponds to a nodal-like quasiparticle excitation and the higher branch is associated with the pair breaking of ``twisted'' quasiparticles, with the threshold energy resembling a pseudogap, which is consistent with the recent STS observation. It can be further extended into energy spectra in momentum space measurable by ARPES, where the low-energy dispersion is also shown to agree well with the quantum Monte Carlo numerical result for a single hole. It implies that the dominant pairing force arises from the twisted holes showing up in the high-energy branch. The effect of the next-nearest-neighbor hopping integral ${t}^{\ensuremath{'}}$ is also examined, which shows an interesting distinction between ${t}^{\ensuremath{'}}/t>0$ and ${t}^{\ensuremath{'}}/t\ensuremath{\le}0$ with a dramatic shift of the low-lying excitation from the nodal region to the antinodal region, but with the high-energy branch remaining insensitive to ${t}^{\ensuremath{'}}$. Finally, a possible ``orthogonality catastrophe'' effect, namely, a ``dark matter'' component in the strongly correlated wave function that cannot be directly detected by the single-electron spectroscopy, is briefly discussed.

arXiv:2309.11556•Physical review. B./Physical review. B•Mar 5, 2025•3 citations

Magnetic polarons at finite temperature: One-hole spectroscopy study

Toni Guthardt, Markus Scheb, Jan von Delft +2 more

The physics of strongly correlated fermions described by Hubbard or t − J models in the underdoped regime—relevant for high-temperature superconductivity in cuprate compounds—remains a subject of ongoing debate. In particular, the nature of charge carriers in this regime is poorly understood, in part due to the unusual properties of their spectral function. In this Letter, we present unbiased numerical results for the one-hole spectral function in a t − J model at finite temperatures. Our study provides valuable insights into the underlying physics of magnetic (or spin-) polaron formation in a doped antiferromagnet (AFM). For example, we find how the suppression of spectral weight outside the magnetic Brillouin zone—a precursor of Fermi arc formation–disappears with increasing temperature, revealing nearly-deconfined spinon excitations of the undoped AFM. The pristine setting we consider can be directly explored using quantum simulators. Our calculations demonstrate that coherent quasiparticle peaks associated with magnetic polarons can be observed up to temperatures T > J above the spin-exchange J , routinely obtained in such experiments. This paves the way for future studies of the fate of magnetic polarons in the pseudogap phase.

arXiv:2504.07701•Physical review. B./Physical review. B•Nov 14, 2025•3 citations

Spin and charge dynamics of doped one-dimensional Mott insulators

Takami Tohyama, Hiroki Maeda, Kenji Tsutsui +2 more

Recent angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) for a newly discovered doped one-dimensional (1D) Mott insulator ${\mathrm{Ba}}_{2\ensuremath{-}x}{\mathrm{Sr}}_{x}{\mathrm{CuO}}_{3+\ensuremath{\delta}}$ proposed the presence of attractive charge interactions between neighboring sites if a 1D Hubbard model is employed to describe the material. On the other hand, long-range repulsive charge interactions were proposed to be crucial for understanding the optical excitations of undoped 1D Mott insulators. Motivated by these contrasting proposals, we perform density-matrix renormalization group calculations of the single-particle spectral function as well as dynamical spin and charge structure factors for two kinds of extended 1D Hubbard models. The spectral function for the long-range repulsive model less agrees with the ARPES data as compared with that for the attractive one. The dynamical spin and charge structure factors also exhibit contrasting behaviors between the two models: The attractive model shows less momentum dependence of the integrated weight in the dynamical spin structure factor and more accumulation of the weight on the upper edge of particle-hole-type excitation in the dynamical charge structure factor. These features give a good criterion of an appropriate model for doped 1D Mott insulators, which can be judged by resonant-inelastic x-ray scattering experiments.

arXiv:2404.11412•Physical review. B./Physical review. B•Sep 3, 2024•2 citations
Angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) has revealed peculiar properties of mobile dopants in correlated antiferromagnets (AFMs). But, describing them theoretically, even in simplified toy models, remains a challenge. Here, we study ARPES spectra of a single mobile hole in the t\ensuremath−Jt\ensuremath{-}Jt\ensuremath−J model. Recent progress in the microscopic description of mobile dopants allows us to use a geometric decoupling of spin and charge fluctuations at strong couplings, from which we conjecture a one-to-one relation of the one-dopant spectral function and the spectrum of a constituting spinon in the undoped parent AFM. We thoroughly test this hypothesis for a single hole doped into a two-dimensional Heisenberg AFM by comparing our semianalytical predictions to previous quantum Monte Carlo results and our large-scale time-dependent matrix product state calculations of the spectral function. Our conclusion is supported by a microscopic trial wave function describing spinon-chargon bound states, which captures the momentum and t/Jt/Jt/J dependence of the quasiparticle residue. From our conjecture we speculate that ARPES measurements in the pseudogap phase of cuprates may directly reveal the Dirac-fermion nature of the constituting spinons. Specifically, we demonstrate that our trial wave function provides a microscopic explanation for the sudden drop of spectral weight around the nodal point associated with the formation of Fermi arcs, assuming that additional frustration suppresses long-range AFM ordering. We benchmark our results by studying the crossover from two to one dimension, where spinons and chargons are confined and deconfined, respectively.
Understanding the nature of charge carriers in doped Mott insulators holds the key to unravelling puzzling properties of strongly correlated electron systems, including cuprate superconductors. Several theoretical models suggested that dopants can be understood as bound states of partons, the analogues of quarks in high-energy physics. However, direct signatures of spinon-chargon bound states are lacking, both in experiment and theory. Here we propose a rotational variant of angle-resolved photo-emission spectroscopy (ARPES) and calculate rotational spectra numerically using the density-matrix renormalization group. We identify long-lived rotational resonances for an individual dopant, which we interpret as a direct indicator of the microscopic structure of spinon-chargon bound states. Similar to Regge trajectories reflecting the quark structure of mesons, we establish a linear dependence of the rotational energy on the superexchange coupling. The rotational peaks we find are strongly suppressed in standard ARPES spectra, but we suggest a multiphoton extension of ARPES which allows us to access rotational spectra. Our findings suggest that multiphoton spectroscopy experiments should provide new insights into emergent universal features of strongly correlated electron systems.
SrCuO 2 has long been considered a near-archetypal realization of a quasi-one-dimensional (1D) system of interacting electrons with short-range interactions. Within this framework, experimental observations — interpreted through the lens of the 1D Hubbard model — suggest that electron and hole excitations decay into two types of (unphysical) collective bosonic modes: “spinons”, which carry the spin degree of freedom, and “holons, which carry the charge degree of freedom. This model, known as spin-charge separation, is most directly evidenced by angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES), where a photo-induced hole decays into a continuum of these excitations. Here we present an alternative perspective grounded in first-principles, self-consistent, and parameter-free many-body perturbation theory. In this revised quasiparticle framework, ARPES can be understood as a one-body effect arising from mild disorder in a long-range antiferromagnetic ground state. the emergence of the so-called spinon branch arises naturally from spin disorder, the anomalous linewidths are accurately captured, and we provide a compelling explanation for the spectral weight observed at the non-magnetic zone boundary. This reinterpretation provides a unified explanation for key experimental signatures previously attributed to spin-charge separation, including features observed in optical conductivity. Additionally, we show that SrCuO 2 exhibits a nontrivial interchain coupling that significantly influences both its one-particle and two-particle spectral functions. By comparing the spectral features of SrCuO 2 with those of La 2 CuO 4 , we argue that SrCuO 2 shares notable similarities with the two-dimensional cuprates—both being rooted in a common CuO 4 plaquette-based molecular orbital framework.
Quantum gas microscopes are a promising tool to study interacting quantum many-body systems and bridge the gap between theoretical models and real materials. One of the most powerful experimental methods in solids is angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES), which measures the single-particle spectral function. The authors propose a measurement scheme to experimentally access the momentum- and energy-resolved spectral function in a quantum gas microscope. As an example for possible applications, the spectrum of a single hole excitation in one-dimensional ttt-JJJ models is calculated and analyzed. A sharp asymmetry in the distribution of spectral weight, reminiscent of the Fermi arcs observed in the pseudogap phase of cuprates, appears in the case of an isotropic Heisenberg spin chain.
The internal structure of doped holes in the Mott insulator may provide important insight into the physics of doped cuprates. Its observability via a single-particle probe by scanning tunneling spectroscopy (STS) and angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) is explored in this paper. Specifically, we study the single-particle spectral function based on a two-hole variational ground-state wave function [J.-Y. Zhao et al., Phys. Rev. X 12, 011062 (2022)] in the $t\text{\ensuremath{-}}J$ model. The latter as a strongly correlated state possesses a dichotomy of ddd-wave Cooper pairing and sss-wave ``twisted'' hole pairing. This pairing structure will give rise to two branches of local spectral function at finite energies. The low-lying one corresponds to a nodal-like quasiparticle excitation and the higher branch is associated with the pair breaking of ``twisted'' quasiparticles, with the threshold energy resembling a pseudogap, which is consistent with the recent STS observation. It can be further extended into energy spectra in momentum space measurable by ARPES, where the low-energy dispersion is also shown to agree well with the quantum Monte Carlo numerical result for a single hole. It implies that the dominant pairing force arises from the twisted holes showing up in the high-energy branch. The effect of the next-nearest-neighbor hopping integral ${t}^{\ensuremath{'}}$ is also examined, which shows an interesting distinction between ${t}^{\ensuremath{'}}/t>0$ and ${t}^{\ensuremath{'}}/t\ensuremath{\le}0$ with a dramatic shift of the low-lying excitation from the nodal region to the antinodal region, but with the high-energy branch remaining insensitive to ${t}^{\ensuremath{'}}$. Finally, a possible ``orthogonality catastrophe'' effect, namely, a ``dark matter'' component in the strongly correlated wave function that cannot be directly detected by the single-electron spectroscopy, is briefly discussed.
The physics of strongly correlated fermions described by Hubbard or t − J models in the underdoped regime—relevant for high-temperature superconductivity in cuprate compounds—remains a subject of ongoing debate. In particular, the nature of charge carriers in this regime is poorly understood, in part due to the unusual properties of their spectral function. In this Letter, we present unbiased numerical results for the one-hole spectral function in a t − J model at finite temperatures. Our study provides valuable insights into the underlying physics of magnetic (or spin-) polaron formation in a doped antiferromagnet (AFM). For example, we find how the suppression of spectral weight outside the magnetic Brillouin zone—a precursor of Fermi arc formation–disappears with increasing temperature, revealing nearly-deconfined spinon excitations of the undoped AFM. The pristine setting we consider can be directly explored using quantum simulators. Our calculations demonstrate that coherent quasiparticle peaks associated with magnetic polarons can be observed up to temperatures T > J above the spin-exchange J , routinely obtained in such experiments. This paves the way for future studies of the fate of magnetic polarons in the pseudogap phase.
Recent angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) for a newly discovered doped one-dimensional (1D) Mott insulator ${\mathrm{Ba}}_{2\ensuremath{-}x}{\mathrm{Sr}}_{x}{\mathrm{CuO}}_{3+\ensuremath{\delta}}$ proposed the presence of attractive charge interactions between neighboring sites if a 1D Hubbard model is employed to describe the material. On the other hand, long-range repulsive charge interactions were proposed to be crucial for understanding the optical excitations of undoped 1D Mott insulators. Motivated by these contrasting proposals, we perform density-matrix renormalization group calculations of the single-particle spectral function as well as dynamical spin and charge structure factors for two kinds of extended 1D Hubbard models. The spectral function for the long-range repulsive model less agrees with the ARPES data as compared with that for the attractive one. The dynamical spin and charge structure factors also exhibit contrasting behaviors between the two models: The attractive model shows less momentum dependence of the integrated weight in the dynamical spin structure factor and more accumulation of the weight on the upper edge of particle-hole-type excitation in the dynamical charge structure factor. These features give a good criterion of an appropriate model for doped 1D Mott insulators, which can be judged by resonant-inelastic x-ray scattering experiments.