Probing inter- and intrachain Zhang-Rice excitons in Li${}_2$CuO${}_2$ and determining their binding energy

Abstract

Cuprate materials, like those hosting high temperature superconductivity, represent a famous class of materials where the correlations between the strongly entangled charges and spins produce complex phase diagrams. Several years ago the Zhang-Rice singlet was proposed as a natural quasiparticle in hole-doped cuprates. The occurance and binding energy of this quasiparticle, consisting of a pair of bound holes with antiparallel spins on the same CuO${}_4$ plaquette, depends on the local electronic interactions, which are fundamental quantities for understanding the physics of the cuprates. Here, we employ state-of-the-art Resonant Inelastic X-ray Scattering (RIXS) to probe the correlated physics of the CuO${}_4$ plaquettes in the quasi-one dimensional chain cuprate Li${}_2$CuO${}_2$. By tuning the incoming photon energy to the O $K$-edge, we populate bound states related to the Zhang-Rice quasiparticles in the RIXS process. Both intra- and interchain Zhang-Rice singlets are observed and their occurrence is shown to depend on the nearest-neighbor spin-spin correlations, which are readily probed in this experiment. We also extract the binding energy of the Zhang-Rice singlet and identify the Zhang-Rice triplet excitation in the RIXS spectra.

arXiv comment8 pages, 4 figures, accepted for publication in Physical Review B

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Cited by in corpus (8)

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• Evidence for a magnetic field-induced unconventional nematic state in the frustrated and anisotropic spin-chain cuprate LiCuSbO${}_4$
• Role of Oxygen States in the Low Valence Nickelate La${}_4$Ni${}_3$O${}_8$
• Probing the interplay between lattice dynamics and short-range magnetic correlations in CuGeO3 with femtosecond RIXS
• Comment on `Oxygen vacancy-induced magnetic moment in edge-sharing CuO${}_2$ chains of Li${}_2$CuO${}_2$'
• Ab initio ligand field approach to determine electronic multiplet properties
• Characteristic exciton energy scales in antiferromagnetic NiPS${}_3$
• Numerical study of resonant inelastic X-ray scattering at the oxygen $K$-edge in insulating cuprates