We study two-leg spin ladder systems analytically by using a t-J model which includes the interchain spin exchange and the interchain hopping term. The spin part is mapped to a quantum sine-Gordon model via a bosonization method that fully accounts for the phase fluctuation. The spin gap in the Luther-Emery phase evolves to gapless Luttinger liquid phases in even-ladders at certain doping concentration. This transition occurs as doping rate increases and/or the ratio of the interchain spin exchange and hopping to the intrachain couplings decreases. We also estimate the transition temperature at which the conventional electron phase is deconfined to spinon and holon.
We study two-leg spin ladder systems analytically by using a t-J model which includes the interchain spin exchange and the interchain hopping term. The spin part is mapped to a quantum sine-Gordon model via a bosonization method that fully accounts for the phase fluctuation. The spin gap in the Luther-Emery phase evolves to gapless Luttinger liquid phases in even-ladders at certain doping concentration. This transition occurs as doping rate increases and/or the ratio of the interchain spin exchange and hopping to the intrachain couplings decreases. We also estimate the transition temperature at which the conventional electron phase is deconfined to spinon and holon.
The two-leg $t\ensuremath{-}J$ ladder forms a spin liquid at half filling that evolves to a Luther-Emery liquid upon doping. Our aim is to obtain a complete phase diagram for isotropic coupling (i.e., rungs and legs equal) as a function of electron density n and the ratio J/t. Two known limiting cases are n<21, which is a single band Luttinger liquid, and small hole doping $\ensuremath{\delta}\ensuremath{\ll}1$ for $J/\stackrel{\ensuremath{\rightarrow}}{t}0,$ which is a Nagaoka ferromagnet. Using Lanczos techniques we examine the region between the Nagaoka and Luther-Emery phases for 1>n>21. We find evidences for gapless behavior in both spin and charge channels for J/t<0.3, consistent with Luttinger liquids in both bonding and antibonding bands (i.e., C2S2). This proposal is based on the behavior of spin and charge correlation functions. For example, the hole-hole correlation function that displays hole pairing at larger J/t shows hole-hole repulsion in this region. As a further test, we examined the dependence of the energy on a relative phase shift between bonding and antibonding bands. For J/t<0.3 this is very weak, indicating a lack of pairing between these channels.
Spin-charge separation is a hallmark of one-dimensional fermionic systems, yet its realization in higher dimensions remains an open question. To address this issue, we investigate a two-leg t-J ladder using the density matrix renormalization group (DMRG) method and its time-dependent extension. By analyzing ground-state correlations and single-particle removal spectra, we systematically examine the effects of plaquette diagonal hopping, spin exchange, and hole doping. Within appropriate parameter regimes, these factors drive the system from the well-known Luther Emery phase, with gapped spin and gapless charge modes, into a Luttinger liquid phase characterized by gapless spin and charge excitations, where signatures of spin-charge separation emerge. In combination with previous studies using exact diagonalization, our results provide evidence that spin-charge separation may persist in wider ladder systems.
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 d-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.
A lightly doped single-band Hubbard model on a two-leg ladder exhibits a Luther-Emery phase, whereas the three-band Hubbard ladder behaves as a Luttinger liquid upon hole doping. To understand this discrepancy, we present a systematic density-matrix renormalization group study of the three-band Hubbard model on two-leg cylinders with further-neighbor particle hoppings. The inclusion of the longer-range hopping is motivated by the studies of the single-band Hubbard model in which the further-neighbor hopping terms are suggested to be crucial for the unconventional superconductivity. When the longer-range hopping parameters are small, the ground state is a Luttinger liquid having mutually commensurate superconducting, charge, and spin density wave correlations. Increasing the longer-range hopping drives a transition into a Luther-Emery phase with quasi-long-ranged superconducting and charge orders but short-ranged spin-spin correlations. By down-folding the three-band Hubbard model into an effective $t\text{\ensuremath{-}}{t}^{\ensuremath{'}}\text{\ensuremath{-}}J\text{\ensuremath{-}}{J}^{\ensuremath{'}}$ model, we find that in the Luther-Emery phase, both the nearest- and second-neighbor kinetic energies are enhanced due to an effective increase of copper-oxygen hybridization. Amplifying intercell oxygen orbital hopping mirrors the benefits of reducing the charge transfer energy, causing doped holes to favor oxygen orbitals and strengthening superconducting pairing.
Inspired by the observation of a robust d-wave superconducting phase driven by tuning the next-nearest-neighbor (NNN) electron hopping in recent density matrix renormalization group (DMRG) studies of six- and eight-leg $t\text{\ensuremath{-}}J$ model, we systematically study the phase diagram of the two-leg $t\text{\ensuremath{-}}J$ ladder with the NNN couplings (including NNN hopping and spin interaction) in a large region of doping level, by means of the DMRG calculations. Upon doping from half filling, we identify the Luther-Emery liquid (LEL) phase, which can be distinguished as the pairing-dominant and charge density-dominant regime by comparing the Luttinger parameter ${K}_{\ensuremath{\rho}}$. With the growing NNN couplings, pairing correlations are enhanced and correspondingly ${K}_{\ensuremath{\rho}}$ increases, driving the system from the density-dominant to the pairing-dominant regime. In the Tomonaga-Luttinger liquid (TLL) phase in the larger doping region, we identify two TLL regimes with different features of charge density correlation. At the quarter filling (1/2 doping level), we find that the strong dimer orders of bond energy in the open system actually decay algebraically and thus do not indicate a spontaneous translational symmetry breaking. Our results show that in the LEL phase of the two-leg ladder, the NNN couplings seem to play the similar role as that on the wider $t\text{\ensuremath{-}}J$ cylinder, and studies on this more accessible system can be helpful toward understanding the emergence of the remarkable d-wave superconducting phase on the wider system.
We study the dimensional crossover from one to two dimensions in half-filled and lightly doped, weakly interacting N-leg Hubbard ladders. In this case, the Hubbard ladders are equivalent to an N-band model. Using renormalization-group techniques, we find that the half-filled ladders exhibit (in the spin sector) an odd-even effect only below a crossover energy ${E}_{c}\ensuremath{\propto}\mathrm{exp}[\ensuremath{-}\ensuremath{\alpha}\mathrm{exp}(\ensuremath{\gamma}N)]$ $(\ensuremath{\alpha}\ensuremath{\ll}1$ and $\ensuremath{\gamma}\ensuremath{\sim}1$ depend on the interaction strength and on the hopping matrix elements): Below Ec, the dominant interactions take place within band pairs $(j,N+1\ensuremath{-}j)$ [and within the band (N+1)/2 for N odd], such that even-leg ladders are an insulating spin liquid, while odd-leg ladders have one gapless spinon mode. In contrast, above the energy scale Ec, all bands are interacting with each other and the system is a two-dimensional- (2D)-like (insulating) antiferromagnet; we obtain an analytical expression for the Hamiltonian which is similar to the 2D Heisenberg antiferromagnet. Bosonization techniques show that in the charge sector the Mott insulator is as well below and above Ec of the same type as in N/2 half-filled two-leg ladders. Doping away from half-filling, we find that the effect of an increasing doping $\ensuremath{\delta}$ is very similar to decreasing the number of legs N: In both cases interactions between unpaired bands are suppressed and thereby the antiferromagnetic correlations reduced. The resulting band pairs form then insulating spin liquids and when doped, there is a spin gap, but phase coherence exists only within the band pairs. At higher doping levels ${\ensuremath{\delta}}_{c}={\ensuremath{\delta}}_{c}(N),$ phase coherence between all band pairs sets in and the system becomes a 2D-like d-wave superconductor $[{\ensuremath{\delta}}_{c}(N)\ensuremath{\rightarrow}0$ for $\stackrel{\ensuremath{\rightarrow}}{N}\ensuremath{\infty}].$