We demonstrate that the sign structure of the t-J model on a hypercubic lattice is entirely different from that of a Fermi gas, by inspecting the high temperature expansion of the partition function up to all orders, as well as the multi-hole propaga
tor of the half-filled state and the perturbative expansion of the ground state energy. We show that while the fermion signs can be completely gauged away by a Marshall sign transformation at half-filling, the bulk of the signs can be also gauged away in a doped case, leaving behind a rarified irreducible sign structure that can be enumerated easily by counting exchanges of holes with themselves and spins on their real space paths. Such a sparse sign structure implies a mutual statistics for the quantum states of the doped Mott insulator.
We present a numerical study of the spin Hall effect in a two-dimensional hole gas (2DHG) system in the presence of disorder. We find that the spin Hall conductance (SHC), extrapolated to the thermodynamic limit, remains finite in a wide range of dis
order strengths for a closed system on torus. But there is no intrinsic spin Hall accumulation as induced by an external electric field once the disorder is turned on. The latter is examined by performing a Laughlins Gedanken gauge experiment numerically with the adiabatical insertion of a flux quantum in a belt-shaped sample, in which the absence of level crossing is found under the disorder effect. Without disorder, on the other hand, energy levels do cross each other, which results in an oscillating spin-density-modulation at the sample boundary after the insertion of one flux quantum in the belt-shaped system. But the corresponding net spin transfer is only about one order of magnitude smaller than what is expected from the bulk SHC. These apparently contradictory results can be attributed to the violation of the spin conservation law in such a system. We also briefly address the dissipative Fermi surface contribution to spin polarization, which may be relevant to experimental measurements.
We present first numerical studies of the disorder effect on the recently proposed intrinsic spin Hall conductance in a three dimensional (3D) lattice Luttinger model. The results show that the spin Hall conductance remains finite in a wide range of
disorder strength, with large fluctuations. The disorder-configuration-averaged spin Hall conductance monotonically decreases with the increase of disorder strength and vanishes before the Anderson localization takes place. The finite-size effect is also discussed.
We present a systematic study of spin dynamics in a superconducting ground state, which itself is a doped-Mott-insulator and can correctly reduce to an antiferromagnetic (AF) state at half-filling with an AF long-range order (AFLRO). Such a doped Mot
t insulator is described by a mean-field theory based on the phase string formulation of the t-J model. We show that the spin wave excitation in the AFLRO state at half-filling evolves into a resonancelike peak at a finite energy in the superconducting state, which is located around the AF wave vectors. The width of such a resonancelike peak in momentum space decides a spin correlation length scale which is inversely proportional to the square root of doping concentration, while the energy of the resonancelike peak scales linearly with the doping concentration at low doping. An important prediction of the theory is that, while the total spin sum rule is satisfied at different doping concentrations, the weight of the resonancelike peak does not vanish, but is continuously saturated to the weight of the AFLRO at zero-doping limit. Besides the low-energy resonancelike peak, we also show that the high-energy excitations still track the spin wave dispersion in momentum space, contributing to a significant portion of the total spin sum rule. The fluctuational effect beyond the mean-field theory is also examined, which is related to the broadening of the resonancelike peak in energy space. In particular, we discuss the incommensurability of the spin dynamics by pointing out that its visibility is strongly tied to the low-energy fluctuations below the resonancelike peak. We finally investigate the interlayer coupling effect on the spin dynamics as a function of doping, by considering a bilayer system.
We show that lightly doped holes will be self-trapped in an antiferromagnetic spin background at low-temperatures, resulting in a spontaneous translational symmetry breaking. The underlying Mott physics is responsible for such novel self-localization
of charge carriers. Interesting transport and dielectric properties are found as the consequences, including large doping-dependent thermopower and dielectric constant, low-temperature variable-range-hopping resistivity, as well as high-temperature strange-metal-like resistivity, which are consistent with experimental measurements in the high-T$_c$ cuprates. Disorder and impurities only play a minor and assistant role here.
We propose a class of wave functions that provide a unified description of antiferromagnetism and d-wave superconductivity in (doped) Mott insulators. The wave function has a Jastrow form and prohibits double occupancies. In the absence of holes, the
wave function describes antiferromagnetism accurately. Off diagonal long range order develops at finite doping and the superconducting order parameter has d-wave symmetry. We also show how nodal quasiparticles and neutral spin excitations can be constructed from this wave function.
In the presence of nonlocal phase shift effects, a quasiparticle can remain topologically stable even in a spin-charge separation state due to the confinement effect introduced by the phase shifts at finite doping. True deconfinement only happens in
the zero-doping limit where a bare hole can lose its integrity and decay into holon and spinon elementary excitations. The Fermi surface structure is completely different in these two cases, from a large band-structure-like one to four Fermi points in one-hole case, and we argue that the so-called underdoped regime actually corresponds to a situation in between.
The motion of a single hole in a Mott antiferromagnet is investigated based on the t-J model. An exact expression of the energy spectrum is obtained, in which the irreparable phase string effect [Phys. Rev. Lett. 77, 5102 (1996)] is explicitly presen
t. By identifying the phase string effect with spin backflow, we point out that spin-charge separation must exist in such a system: the doped hole has to decay into a neutral spinon and a spinless holon, together with the phase string. We show that while the spinon remains coherent, the holon motion is deterred by the phase string, resulting in its localization in space. We calculate the electron spectral function which explains the line shape of the spectral function as well as the ``quasiparticle spectrum observed in angle-resolved photoemission experiments. Other analytic and numerical approaches are discussed based on the present framework.
We present a self-consistent RVB theory which unifies the metallic (superconducting) phase with the half-filling antiferromagnetic (AF) phase. Two crucial factors in this theory include the RVB condensation which controls short-range AF spin correlat
ions and the phase string effect introduced by hole hopping as a key doping effect. We discuss both the uniform and non-uniform mean-field solutions and show the unique features of the characteristic spin energy scale, superconducting transition temperature, and the phase diagram, which are all consistent with the experimental measurements of high-$T_c$ cuprates.
Quasiparticle properties are explored in an effective theory of the $t-J$ model which includes two important components: spin-charge separation and unrenormalizable phase shift. We show that the phase shift effect indeed causes the system to be a non
-Fermi liquid as conjectured by Anderson on a general ground. But this phase shift also drastically changes a conventional perception of quasiparticles in a spin-charge separation state: an injected hole will remain {em stable} due to the confinement of spinon and holon by the phase shift field despite the background is a spinon-holon sea. True {em deconfinement} only happens in the {em zero-doping} limit where a bare hole will lose its integrity and decay into holon and spinon elementary excitations. The Fermi surface structure is completely different in these two cases, from a large band-structure-like one to four Fermi points in one-hole case, and we argue that the so-called underdoped regime actually corresponds to a situation in between, where the ``gap-like effect is amplified further by a microscopic phase separation at low temperature. Unique properties of the single-electron propagator in both normal and superconducting states are studied by using the equation of motion method. We also comment on some of influential ideas proposed in literature related to the Mott-Hubbard insulator and offer a unified view based on the present consistent theory.
