The evolution of the spin gap of a 2-leg ladder upon doping depends upon the nature of the lowest triplet excitations in a ladder with two holes. Here we study this evolution using various numerical techniques for a $t\ensuremath{-}{t}^{\ensuremath{'}}\ensuremath{-}J$ ladder as the next-near-neighbor hopping ${t}^{\ensuremath{'}}$ is varied. We find that depending on the value of ${t}^{\ensuremath{'}},$ the spin gap can evolve continuously or discontinuously and the lowest triplet state can correspond to a magnon, a bound magnon-hole-pair, or two separate quasiparticles. Previous experimental results on the superconducting two-leg ladder ${\mathrm{Sr}}_{14\ensuremath{-}x}{\mathrm{Ca}}_{x}{\mathrm{Cu}}_{24}{\mathrm{O}}_{41}$ are discussed.
We study the effect of doping away from half-filling in weakly (but finitely) interacting N-leg Hubbard ladders using renormalization-group and bosonization techniques. For a small on-site repulsion U, the N-leg Hubbard ladders are equivalent to an N-band model, where at half-filling the Fermi velocities are ${v}_{1}{=v}_{N}<{v}_{2}{=v}_{N\ensuremath{-}1}<\ensuremath{\cdot}\ensuremath{\cdot}\ensuremath{\cdot}.$ We then obtain a hierarchy of energy scales, where the band pairs $(j,N+1\ensuremath{-}j)$ are successively frozen out. The low-energy Hamiltonian is then the sum of
N/2 [or $(N\ensuremath{-}1)/2$ for N odd] two-leg ladder Hamiltonians without gapless excitations (plus a single chain for N odd with one gapless spin mode)---similar to the N-leg Heisenberg spin ladders. The energy scales lead to a hierarchy of gaps. Upon doping away from half-filling, the holes first enter the band(s) with the smallest gap: For odd N, the holes enter first the nonbonding band
(N+1)/2 and the phase is a Luttinger liquid, while for even N, the holes enter first the band pair
(N/2,N/2+1) and the phase is a Luther-Emery liquid, similar to numerical treatments of the $t\ensuremath{-}J$ model, i.e., at and close to half-filling, the phases of the Hubbard ladders for small and large U are the same. For increasing doping, hole pairs subsequently enter at critical dopings the other band pairs $(j,N+1\ensuremath{-}j)$ (accompanied by a diverging compressibility): The Fermi surface is successively opened by doping, starting near the wave vector $(\ensuremath{\pi}/2,\ensuremath{\pi}/2).$ Explicit calculations are given for the cases
N=3 and 4.
It is shown, using asymptotically exact methods, that the two-dimensional repulsive Hubbard model with strongly modulated interactions exhibits ``high-temperature superconductivity.'' Specifically, the explicit modulation, which has the same symmetry as period 4 bond-centered stripes, breaks the system into an alternating array of more and less heavily hole-doped, nearly decoupled two-leg ladders. It is shown that this system exhibits a pairing scale determined by the spin gap of the undoped two-leg ladder, and a phase ordering temperature proportional to a low positive power of the interladder coupling.