The stability of the spin polaron quasiparticle, well established in studies of a single hole in the 2D antiferromagnets, is investigated in the 1D antiferromagnets using a t t - J J model. We perform an exact slave fermion transformation to the holon-magnon basis, and diagonalize numerically the resulting model in the presence of a single hole. We demonstrate that the spin polaron collapses - and the spin-charge separation takes over - due to the specific role played by the magnon-magnon interactions and the magnon hard-core constraint in the 1D t t - J J model. Moreover, we prove that the spin polaron is stable for any strength of the magnon-magnon interaction other than the unique value found in a 1D antiferromagnet with the continuous symmetry of the spin interactions. Fine-tuning to this unique value is extremely unlikely to occur in quasi-1D antiferromagnets, therefore the spin polaron is the stable quasiparticle of realistic 1D materials. Our results lead to a new interpretation of the ARPES spectra of quasi-1D antiferromagnets in the spin polaron language.
The stability of the spin polaron quasiparticle, well established in studies of a single hole in the 2D antiferromagnets, is investigated in the 1D antiferromagnets using a t t - J J model. We perform an exact slave fermion transformation to the holon-magnon basis, and diagonalize numerically the resulting model in the presence of a single hole. We demonstrate that the spin polaron collapses - and the spin-charge separation takes over - due to the specific role played by the magnon-magnon interactions and the magnon hard-core constraint in the 1D t t - J J model. Moreover, we prove that the spin polaron is stable for any strength of the magnon-magnon interaction other than the unique value found in a 1D antiferromagnet with the continuous symmetry of the spin interactions. Fine-tuning to this unique value is extremely unlikely to occur in quasi-1D antiferromagnets, therefore the spin polaron is the stable quasiparticle of realistic 1D materials. Our results lead to a new interpretation of the ARPES spectra of quasi-1D antiferromagnets in the spin polaron language.
Solid state physics, a very broad field in natural science, aims to explain physical properties of materials modeled as a many-body ensemble of the order of ∼ 10^23 interacting particles. For interacting metallic systems, one of the most powerful tools for unraveling the consequences of the collective interaction is the Fermi liquid theory. While still being an approximation, it excellently models many materials especially in the low-temperature and low-energy regime by treating themany-body problem as being equivalent to effectively non-interacting ”particles”, which is done by introducing the concept of quasiparticles. During the last few decades, several exotic phases of matter have been discovered, which originate from strong Coulomb interactions between the electrons, whose description is beyond the Fermi liquid theory. This thesis addresses the question of the validity of Fermi liquid theory once a single hole is introduced into an antiferromagnet with completely localized spins due to the strong interactions. Here, the most-studied case concerns the so-called 2D t − J model, which hosts a well-defined quasiparticle, the spin polaron. Focusing on a more tractable case, the t − Jz model without quantum spin fluctuations, we study the stability of the spin polaron solution once the nextnearest neighbor hopping t′ is introduced into the system. We focus on observations at the Γ-point and the X-point of systems with fixed Jz = 0.4t and varying t′ ∈ [−0.5t, 0.5t]. The model is numerically solved using exact diagonalization on finite-size lattices of up to 32 sites. A study of the quasiparticle weight under finite-size scaling reveals an “anomalous” regime at the Γ-point fort′ ≤ −0.3t, indicated by a vanishing quasiparticle weight. In order to characterize the low-energy dynamics within this “anomalous” regime, we investigated the spin correlation centered around the hole, as well as the magnon number distribution of a single-doped 20-site system. Based on the results, we present a preliminary picture of the antiferromagnetic ground state doped with one hole within that “anomalous” regime (t′ ≤ −0.3t) that deviates from the standard spin polaron as the cloud of magnetic fluctuations, typically localized around the hole, delocalizes over the whole finite-size lattice. Consequently, such systems show a weakly suppressed antiferromagnetic configuration under single-hole doping.
The motion of a single hole in a two-dimensional Heisenberg antiferromagnet (hAF) is studied in a representation where holes are described as spinless fermions (holons) and spins as normal bosons. Assuming long-range AF order the spin dynamics is treated in linear spin-wave theory. The formulation highlights the close relation with the conventional polaron problem. The holon Green's function is calculated self-consistently within the Born approximation using finite-cluster geometries for the numerical solution. As a remarkable result we find close agreement with the spectral function A(k,\ensuremath{\omega}) of a hole calculated by exact diagonalization methods. A(k,\ensuremath{\omega}) is characterized by a narrow quasiparticle (QP) peak at the low-energy side of the spectrum, which is well separated from the incoherent part for large enough J values. A complete characterization of our solution is given, including the spectral weight, the dispersion relation, and effective masses of the QP state. A finite-size-scaling study gives a nonvanishing spectral weight of the QP in the thermodynamic limit for values J/t typical for copper oxide superconductors. Our calculations indicate that the self-consistent Born approximation is a valuable scheme for characterizing the dynamics of a hole in the t-J model, even in the strong-coupling regime.
We solved numerically the integral equation for the selfenergy which describes the motion of a single hole in a two-dimensional quantum antiferromagnet (AF) within the selfconsistent Born approximation. This formulation stresses the similarity of the AF-spin polaron with the standard polaron problem. We confine our calculation to finite cluster geometries and compare with results from previous exact diagonalization studies. The spectral function is characterized by a narrow quasiparticle (qp) peak at the low energy side of the spectra, which appears to be well separated from the incoherent band part for large enough J values. For small J we find a reduced width of ~7t for the incoherent band. The bottom of the coherent qp band always occurs at (±π/2, ±π/2). Its bandwidth initially increases with J until J≃t and then decreases as 2t2/J. A complete characterization of our solution is given, including the dispersion relation and effective masses of this quasiparticle. The comparison with exact diagonalization studies for a 4×4 cluster is remarkably good. From our results we see that a lattice of 16×16 sites describes adequately the thermodynamic limit. We conclude that the simple Born approximation is a valuable scheme to characterize the dynamics of one hole in the t-J model. both in the perturbative and the strong coupling regimes.
The properties of mobile impurities in quantum magnets are fundamental for our understanding of strongly correlated materials and may play a key role in the physics of high-temperature superconductivity. Hereby, the motion of hole-like defects through an antiferromagnet has been of particular importance. It creates magnetic frustrations that lead to the formation of a quasiparticle, whose complex structure continues to pose substantial challenges to theory and numerical simulations. In this article, we develop a nonperturbative theoretical approach to describe the microscopic properties of such magnetic polarons. Based on the self-consistent Born approximation, which is provenly accurate in the strong-coupling regime, we obtain a complete description of the polaron wave function by solving a set of Dyson-like equations that permit to compute relevant spin-hole correlation functions. We apply this new method to analyze the spatial structure of magnetic polarons in the strongly interacting regime and find qualitative differences from predictions of previously applied truncation schemes. Our calculations reveal a remarkably high spatial symmetry of the polaronic magnetization cloud and a surprising misalignment between its orientation and the polaron crystal momentum. The developed framework opens up an approach to the microscopic properties of doped quantum magnets and will enable detailed analyses of ongoing experiments based on cold-atom quantum simulations of the Fermi-Hubbard model.
The understanding of matter does not only require a precise analysis of individual characteristics of the fundamental constituents, but also the study of their collective behavior.Solid state physics, and in particular research in strongly correlated electron systems, deals with such collective phenomena.The properties of the electrons, charge and spin quantum numbers, do not on their own explain the rich world of states of matter, however mutual interactions lead to various states or phases of matter.This work focuses on phases in quantum spin systems.On the basis of the Heisenberg model one (1D) and two dimensional (2D) spin lattices are investigated.In a first part the bilayer Heisenberg Model and the 2D Kondo necklace model are studied.Both models exhibit a quantum phase transition between an ordered and disordered phase.For small interlayer couplings the models have antiferromagnetic long-range order, which is destroyed by increasing the coupling.However, even in the disordered phase the models show global features in terms of collective excitations called magnons.Coming from the disordered phase the gapped magnons condense at a critical coupling and form the order of the ordered phase.Here, another interesting question arises, namely that of the coupling of a single doped hole to such critical fluctuations.A self-consistent Born approximation predicts that the doped hole couples to the magnons such that the quasiparticle residue vanishes at the quantum critical point.In this work the delicate question about the fate of the quasiparticle residue across the quantum phase transition is also tackled by means of large scale quantum Monte Carlo simulations.Furthermore the dynamics of a single hole doped in the magnetic background is investigated.
The problem of the single-hole motion in a two-dimensional quantum Heisenberg antiferromagnet is examined in the t-J model. By introducing a kind of slave-fermion representation for Hubbard operators a hole is treated as a spinless fermion strongly interacting with spin-1/2 degrees of freedom. We suggest an analytic approach based on a decoupling procedure for two-time fermionic Green functions that allows us to describe a hole as a magnetic polaron of a minimal size (i.e., involving one-step ``string'' spin excitations) and reproduce the main features characteristic of a one-hole band in a quantum antiferromagnet. A generalization of the procedure in the spirit of the Lanczos approach to extend the internal structure of the magnetic polaron is discussed.