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arXiv:cond-mat/0108099 · Physical Review Letters

Li-Induced Spin and Charge Excitations in a Spin Ladder

Andreas Martin Läuchli, Didier Poilblanc, Thomas Maurice Rice, Steven R. White

Published Jun 5, 2002• 6 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

A lithium dopant in a cuprate spin ladder acts as a vacant (nonmagnetic) site accompanied by an extra hole bound by a Coulomb potential. We find that, although the undoped ladder spin gap is not essentially altered by Li doping, a dopant-magnon bound state appears just below the gap. Contrary to Zn-doped ladders, the spin liquid character of a Li-doped ladder should be robust against antiferromagnetism. We give a possible explanation for the similarity of Zn and Li dopants in underdoped cuprates and propose experimental tests.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.88.257201

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Spin models that have been proposed to describe dimerized chains, ladders, two-dimensional antiferromagnets, and other compounds are studied here when some spins are replaced by spinless vacancies, such as it occurs by Zn doping. A small percentage of vacancies rapidly destroys the spin gap, and their presence induces enhanced antiferromagnetic correlations near those vacancies. The study is performed with computational techniques which includes Lanczos, world-line Monte Carlo, and the density-matrix renormalization-group methods. Since the phenomenon of enhanced antiferromagnetism is found to occur in several models and cluster geometries, a common simple explanation for its presence may exist. It is argued that the resonating-valence-bond character of the spin correlations at short distances of a large variety of models is responsible for the presence of robust staggered spin correlations near vacancies and lattice edges. The phenomenon takes place regardless of the long distance properties of the ground state, and it is caused by a ``pruning'' of the available spin singlets in the vicinity of the vacancies. The effect produces a broadening of the low-temperature NMR signal for the compounds analyzed here. This broadening should be experimentally observable in the structurally dimerized chain systems $\mathrm{Cu}({\mathrm{NO}}_{3}{)}_{2}\ensuremath{\cdot}2.5{\mathrm{H}}_{2}\mathrm{O}$, ${\mathrm{CuWO}}_{4}$, $(\mathrm{VO}{)}_{2}{\mathrm{P}}_{2}{\mathrm{O}}_{7}$, and ${\mathrm{Sr}}_{14}{\mathrm{Cu}}_{24}{\mathrm{O}}_{41},$ in ladder materials such as ${\mathrm{SrCu}}_{2}{\mathrm{O}}_{3}$, in the spin-Peierls systems ${\mathrm{CuGeO}}_{3}$ and ${\mathrm{NaV}}_{2}{\mathrm{O}}_{5}$, and in several others since it is a universal effect common to a wide variety of models and compounds. In addition, it is argued that the N\'eel order observed in ${\mathrm{SrCu}}_{2}{\mathrm{O}}_{3}$ upon Zn doping is induced by the local antiferromagnetic order discussed in this paper, enhanced by a favorable ratio between the actual Heisenberg couplings along chains and rungs, as reported in recent experimental literature. Based on this reasoning it is predicted here that other ladder materials such as Zn-doped ${\mathrm{Cu}}_{2}({\mathrm{C}}_{5}{\mathrm{H}}_{12}{\mathrm{N}}_{2}{)}_{2}{\mathrm{Cl}}_{4}$ will not present N\'eel order at small Zn concentrations.

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A lithium dopant in a cuprate spin ladder acts as a vacant (nonmagnetic) site accompanied by an extra hole bound by a Coulomb potential. We find that, although the undoped ladder spin gap is not essentially altered by Li doping, a dopant-magnon bound state appears just below the gap. Contrary to Zn-doped ladders, the spin liquid character of a Li-doped ladder should be robust against antiferromagnetism. We give a possible explanation for the similarity of Zn and Li dopants in underdoped cuprates and propose experimental tests.
The three-leg ladder has one odd-parity and two even-parity channels. At low doping these behave quite differently. Numerical calculations for a $t\ensuremath{-}J$ model show that the initial phase upon hole doping has two components---a conducting Luttinger liquid in the odd-parity channel, coexisting with an insulating (i.e., undoped) spin-liquid phase in the even-parity channels. This phase has a partially truncated Fermi surface and violates the Luttinger theorem. This coexistence of conducting fermionic and insulating paired bosonic degrees of freedom is similar to the recent proposal of Geshkenbein, Ioffe, and Larkin [Phys. Rev. B 55, 3173 (1997)] for the underdoped spin-gap normal phase of the cuprates. A mean-field approximation is derived which has many similarities to the numerical results. One difference however is an induced hole pairing in the odd-parity channel at arbitrary small dopings, similar to that proposed by Geshkenbein, Ioffe, and Larkin for the two-dimensional case. At higher dopings, we propose that a quantum phase transition will occur as holes enter the even-parity channels, resulting in a Luther-Emery liquid with hole pairing with essentially ddd-wave character. In the mean-field approximation a crossover occurs which we interpret as a reflection of this quantum phase transition deduced from the numerical results.
This thesis describes the neutron scattering measurements of magnetic excitations in \nspin-chains and ladders. The first part discusses an experimental investigation of the copper oxide family Srâ â Cuâ â Oâ â composed of edge-sharing chains and spin-ladders. \nThe study of Laâ Srâ â Cuâ â Oâ â comprises a slightly hole-doped chain and an undoped ladder structure where the chain can be modeled by a ferromagnetic nearest and an \nantiferromagnetic next-nearest neighbor coupling. The hole effects are apparent in gaps in the dispersion relation and can be described by a charge-density wave agreeing with the commensuration of the dispersion. Investigating the undoped ladder establishes \nthe exchange constants including a cyclic exchange manifested by the two-magnon \ncontinuum and the suppression of the S = 1 bound mode. An orbital consideration \nprovides an explanation for the exchanges including the different sizes of rung and \nleg coupling. The excitation spectrum of the doped ladder in Caâ .â Srâ â .â Cuâ â Oâ â can be \ndescribed by a direct comparison with the undoped ladder and the differences consisting \nof a higher energy mode and subgap scattering can be successfully modeled by the charge spectrum of the ladder calculated from the free electron model. The second part of the thesis investigates the alternating chain material Cu(NOâ )â · 2.5D2O and establishes the gapped one-magnon dispersion, the two-magnon continuum and for the first time the S =1 bound mode. Applying magnetic field drives the system through two critical field transitions, condensation of magnons into the ground state and saturation. The modes beyond saturation can be modeled by spin wave theory and the excitations at the first critical field follow Luttinger Liquid behavior. Additionally investigated are the temperature effects with the excitations being of a different nature but containing the signature of a strong correlated system. For an outlook the measurements including temperature and field are provided with further theoretical descriptions necessary.
Effects of nonmagnetic impurity doping in a spin ladder system with a spin gap are investigated by the exact diagonalization as well as by the variational Monte Carlo calculations. Substantial changes in macroscopic properties such as enhancements in spin correlations and magnetic susceptibilities are observed in the low impurity concentration region, which are caused by the increase of low-energy states. These results suggest that small but finite amount of nonmagnetic impurity doping relevantly causes the reduction or the vanishment of the spin gap. This qualitatively explains the experimental result of Zn-doped SrCu2_{2}2​O3_{3}3​ where small doping induces gapless nature. We propose a possible scenario for this drastic change as a quantum phase transition in a spin gapped ladder system due to spinon doping effects.
A proper theoretical description of doped antiferromagnets is until now an unresolved issue. In this work we study chain and ladder systems, and in particularly we focus on the physically most interesting two leg ladder. Our starting point is the Spin Fermion model in which an antiferromagnetic background of localized spins interacts with mobile holes via a rotation invariant Kondo-like term. The interesting region of the phase diagram is that close to the Mott-insulator transition where the doping delta is zero. At zero doping in fact the system is an insulator and the spins organize themselves in a spin liquid, a rotational invariant state characterized by a finite correlation length and an energy gap (a spin gap) above the ground state. Such a state is also the ground state of a field theory, the non linear sigma model (NLsigmaM) which is recognized as the low energy effective theory for antiferromagnetic spin ladder. The first question we answer is how such a spin state evolves as one moves off from the Mott phase by increasing the doping. Integrating out the fermions in our model we obtain an effective theory for the spins which we are able to evaluate in the continuum limit. The effective theory is again a NLsigmaM with coupling constants which depend on the concentration of dopant holes. In contrast to existing mean field calculation our theory predicts a lowering of the spin gap with doping and a consequent increase in the correlation length. Indeed a lowering of the spin gap due to doping is also observed in numerical simulation and on NMR experiments on $Sr14-xCaxCu24O41 with which we obtain very good agreement. Secondly we concentrated on the behavior of the fermions. The general paradigm of interacting fermions in one dimension is that of the Luttinger Liquid characterized by bosonic excitations and spin charge separation. By generalizing our approach we are able to access the one particle fermion propagator as a quantity averaged over the NLsigmaM which controls the spin background. We see that in the limit of zero doping the quasiparticle weight Z is non-zero in a neighborhood of the Fermi energy. This in turn implies that the Luttinger liquid parameter Krho goes to one as the doping delta goes to zero as was first argued by Schulz. Our stronger result allows us to assert that in the very low doping regime the fermions constitute a Fermi liquid.
Different roles of Zn2+^{2+}2+ and Li+^{+}+ impurities in the CuO2_22​ plane in undoped cuprate compounds
A planar Mott insulator with easy plane Néel order can be mapped onto a Gutzwiller-projected spin Hall state. The in-plane substitution of Zn2+^{2+}2+ and Li+^{+}+ for Cu2+^{2+}2+ brings zero modes around the spin vacancy. The Gutzwiller projection precludes single particle excitations, however, preserves the zero modes which have a local spin moment for Zn2+^{2+}2+ and a local charged hole for Li+^{+}+, respectively. While the local spin moment for Zn2+^{2+}2+ is screened by the long-range spin correlations, the active charge degree of freedom for Li+^{+}+ impurity twists the spin background with long ranged disturbances. This proposal explains the very different roles of the Zn2+^{2+}2+ and Li+^{+}+ impurities on the magnetic perturbations in the CuO2_22​ plane in the undoped cuprate compounds.
Spin models that have been proposed to describe dimerized chains, ladders, two-dimensional antiferromagnets, and other compounds are studied here when some spins are replaced by spinless vacancies, such as it occurs by Zn doping. A small percentage of vacancies rapidly destroys the spin gap, and their presence induces enhanced antiferromagnetic correlations near those vacancies. The study is performed with computational techniques which includes Lanczos, world-line Monte Carlo, and the density-matrix renormalization-group methods. Since the phenomenon of enhanced antiferromagnetism is found to occur in several models and cluster geometries, a common simple explanation for its presence may exist. It is argued that the resonating-valence-bond character of the spin correlations at short distances of a large variety of models is responsible for the presence of robust staggered spin correlations near vacancies and lattice edges. The phenomenon takes place regardless of the long distance properties of the ground state, and it is caused by a ``pruning'' of the available spin singlets in the vicinity of the vacancies. The effect produces a broadening of the low-temperature NMR signal for the compounds analyzed here. This broadening should be experimentally observable in the structurally dimerized chain systems $\mathrm{Cu}({\mathrm{NO}}_{3}{)}_{2}\ensuremath{\cdot}2.5{\mathrm{H}}_{2}\mathrm{O}$, CuWO4{\mathrm{CuWO}}_{4}CuWO4​, (VO)2P2O7(\mathrm{VO}{)}_{2}{\mathrm{P}}_{2}{\mathrm{O}}_{7}(VO)2​P2​O7​, and Sr14Cu24O41,{\mathrm{Sr}}_{14}{\mathrm{Cu}}_{24}{\mathrm{O}}_{41},Sr14​Cu24​O41​, in ladder materials such as SrCu2O3{\mathrm{SrCu}}_{2}{\mathrm{O}}_{3}SrCu2​O3​, in the spin-Peierls systems CuGeO3{\mathrm{CuGeO}}_{3}CuGeO3​ and NaV2O5{\mathrm{NaV}}_{2}{\mathrm{O}}_{5}NaV2​O5​, and in several others since it is a universal effect common to a wide variety of models and compounds. In addition, it is argued that the N\'eel order observed in SrCu2O3{\mathrm{SrCu}}_{2}{\mathrm{O}}_{3}SrCu2​O3​ upon Zn doping is induced by the local antiferromagnetic order discussed in this paper, enhanced by a favorable ratio between the actual Heisenberg couplings along chains and rungs, as reported in recent experimental literature. Based on this reasoning it is predicted here that other ladder materials such as Zn-doped Cu2(C5H12N2)2Cl4{\mathrm{Cu}}_{2}({\mathrm{C}}_{5}{\mathrm{H}}_{12}{\mathrm{N}}_{2}{)}_{2}{\mathrm{Cl}}_{4}Cu2​(C5​H12​N2​)2​Cl4​ will not present N\'eel order at small Zn concentrations.