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arXiv:2409.14490 · Physical Review Letters

Signature of Preformed Pairs in Angle-Resolved Photoemission Spectroscopy

Klemen Kovač, Alberto Nocera, A. Damascelli, J. Bonča, Mona Berciu

Published Mar 4, 2025• 3 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

We use density matrix renormalization group (DMRG) and variational exact diagonalization (VED) to calculate the single-electron removal spectral weight for the Hubbard-Holstein model at low electron densities. Tuning the strength of the electron-phonon coupling and of the Hubbard repulsion allows us to contrast the results for a liquid of polarons versus a liquid of bipolarons. The former shows spectral weight up to the Fermi energy, as expected for a metal. The latter has a gap in its spectral weight, set by the bipolaron binding energy, although this is also a (strongly correlated) metal. This difference suggests that angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy could be used to identify liquids of pre-formed pairs. Furthermore, we show that the one-dimensional liquid of incoherent bipolarons is well approximated by a "Bose sea" of bosons that are hard-core in momentum space, occupying the momenta inside the Fermi sea but otherwise noninteracting. This new proposal for a strongly correlated many-body wave function opens the way for studying various other properties of incoherent (nonsuperconducting) liquids of preformed pairs in any dimension.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.134.096502

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We use density matrix renormalization group (DMRG) and variational exact diagonalization (VED) to calculate the single-electron removal spectral weight for the Hubbard-Holstein model at low electron densities. Tuning the strength of the electron-phonon coupling and of the Hubbard repulsion allows us to contrast the results for a liquid of polarons versus a liquid of bipolarons. The former shows spectral weight up to the Fermi energy, as expected for a metal. The latter has a gap in its spectral weight, set by the bipolaron binding energy, although this is also a (strongly correlated) metal. This difference suggests that angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy could be used to identify liquids of pre-formed pairs. Furthermore, we show that the one-dimensional liquid of incoherent bipolarons is well approximated by a "Bose sea" of bosons that are hard-core in momentum space, occupying the momenta inside the Fermi sea but otherwise noninteracting. This new proposal for a strongly correlated many-body wave function opens the way for studying various other properties of incoherent (nonsuperconducting) liquids of preformed pairs in any dimension.
We use variational exact diagonalization (VED) to calculate the two-electron removal spectral weight for the Hubbard-Holstein model, starting from the ground state with two electrons on a one-dimensional chain. We argue that this spectral weight provides a valuable proxy for the intensity of 2eARPES processes. Our results show that when contrasted to the presumably larger signal due to two electrons ejected from two different pairs, the presumably weaker signal due to two electrons ejected from the same pair (i) is segregated in energy, appearing at a lower binding energy, and (ii) has a very characteristic momentum dependence, with a different symmetry than that of the signal corresponding to two electrons emitted from two different pairs. We verify that these fingerprints appear for pairs with different symmetries, and prove that they arise as a direct consequence of momentum and energy conservation, therefore they are generic for any model with electron-boson coupling that can lead to formation of electron pairs. Experimental observation of these fingerprints will confirm the existence of pairs. Moreover, the momentum dependence map allows one to distinguish whether the pairs are coherent (superconducting) or not. Finally, we argue that these considerations generalize to finite but low electron concentrations, finite temperatures, and higher dimensions.
Using an efficient variational exact diagonalization method, we computed the electron removal spectral function within the framework of the Holstein-Hubbard model containing two electrons with opposite spins coupled to dispersive quantum optical phonons. We focus on how the interplay between the electron-phonon coupling and on-site Coulomb repulsion shapes the spectral function, a quantity directly relevant to angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES). Tuning the strengths of the electron-phonon coupling and the Hubbard interaction allows us to examine the evolution of the spectral properties of the system as it crosses over from a bound bipolaron to separate polarons. We find that phonon dispersion plays an important role: It substantially redistributes the spectral weight across the low- and the high-energy features and controls the emergence and the structure of distinct multiphonon continua. In regimes of strong electron-phonon coupling and low Coulomb repulsion, the spectral function exhibits a broad distribution reflecting bound bipolaronic states. Increasing the Coulomb repulsion weakens bipolaron binding, shifts the primary quasiparticle peak closer to polaronic behavior and confines the spectral weight near the Brillouin-zone center. Our results provide a framework for interpreting ARPES measurements in systems where phonon–mediated attraction competes with direct Coulomb repulsion.
Spectral functions are important quantities that contain a wealth of information about the quasiparticles of a system, and that can also be measured experimentally. For systems with electron-phonon coupling, good approximations for the spectral function are available only in the Migdal limit (at Fermi energies much larger than the typical phonon frequency, E_F\gg \Omega E F ≫ Ω , requiring a large carrier concentration x x ) and in the single polaron limit (at x=0 x = 0 ). Here we show that the region with x\ll 1 x ≪ 1 ( E_F<\Omega E F < Ω ) can also be reliably investigated with the Momentum Average (MA) variational approximation, which essentially describes the formation of a polaron above an inert Fermi sea. Specifically, we show that for the one-dimensional spinless Holstein model, the MA spectral functions compare favorably with those calculated using variationally exact density matrix renormalization group simulations (DMRG) evaluated directly in frequency-space, so long as x<0.1 x < 0.1 and the adiabaticity ratio \Omega/t>0.5 Ω / t > 0.5 . Unlike in the Migdal limit, here 'polaronic physics’ emerges already at moderate couplings. The relevance of these results for a spinful low- x x metal is also discussed.
We calculate the spectral function of the one-dimensional Hubbard-Holstein model using the time-dependent density matrix renormalization group, focusing on the regime of large local Coulomb repulsion, and away from electronic half-filling. We argue that, from weak to intermediate electron-phonon coupling, phonons interact only with the electronic charge, and not with the spin degrees of freedom. For strong electron-phonon interaction, spinon and holon bands are not discernible anymore and the system is well described by a spinless polaronic liquid. In this regime, we observe multiple peaks in the spectrum with an energy separation corresponding to the energy of the lattice vibrations (i.e., phonons). We support the numerical results by introducing a well controlled analytical approach based on Ogata-Shiba's factorized wave function, showing that the spectrum can be understood as a convolution of three contributions, originating from charge, spin, and lattice sectors. We recognize and interpret these signatures in the spectral properties and discuss the experimental implications.
We compute the finite-temperature single-particle spectral function of a one-dimensional Luttinger liquid coupled to an optical phonon band. The calculation is performed exactly for the case in which electron-phonon coupling is purely forward scattering. We extend the results to include backward scattering with a renormalization group treatment. The dispersion contains a change in velocity at the phonon energy, qualitatively similar to the case of electron-phonon coupling in a Fermi liquid. If the backward scattering part of the the electron-phonon interaction is not too strong compared to the forward scattering part, coupling to phonons also produces a pronounced peak in the spectral function at low energies. The calculated spectral function is remarkably similar to the angle-resolved photoemission spectra of the high-temperature superconductors, including the apparent presence of ``nodal quasiparticles,'' the presence of a ``kink'' in the dispersion, and the non-Fermi-liquid frequency and temperature dependencies. Although a microscopic justification has not been established for treating the electronic dynamics of the cuprates as quasi-one-dimensional, at the very least we take the quality of the comparison as evidence of the non-Fermi-liquid character of the measured spectra.
In order to understand the effects of electron-phonon coupling and Coulomb interactions in angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES), a spin-1/2 Hubbard-Holstein model at half-filling is theoretically investigated by means of the mean field theory and classical Monte Carlo simulation method. It shows that the spectral shape of the one-dimensional system is significantly modified by the electron-phonon coupling and Coulomb interactions. The suppression of charge-density wave in one-dimensional system has been ascribed to the short-range Coulomb repulsion and thermal lattice fluctuations. The competition between these interactions can induce zero energy gaps in APPES as well as complete cancellation of charge or spin ordering.