Intrinsic translational symmetry breaking in a doped Mott insulator

Abstract

A central issue of Mott physics, with symmetries being fully retained in the spin background, concerns the charge excitation. In a two-leg spin ladder with spin gap, an injected hole can exhibit either a Bloch wave or a density wave by tuning the ladder anisotropy through a `quantum critical point' (QCP). The nature of such a QCP has been a subject of recent studies by density matrix renormalization group (DMRG). In this paper, we reexamine the ground state of the one doped hole, and show that a two-component structure is present in the density wave regime in contrast to the single component in the Bloch wave regime. In the former, the density wave itself is still contributed by a standing-wave-like component characterized by a quasiparticle spectral weight $Z$ in a finite-size system. But there is an additional charge incoherent component emerging, which intrinsically breaks the translational symmetry associated with the density wave. The partial momentum is carried away by neutral spin excitations. Such an incoherent part does not manifest in the single-particle spectral function, directly probed by the angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) measurement, however it is demonstrated in the momentum distribution function. The Landau's one-to-one correspondence hypothesis for a Fermi liquid breaks down here. The microscopic origin of this density wave state as an intrinsic manifestation of the doped Mott physics will be also discussed.

11 pages, 6 figures, an extended version of arXiv:1601.00655

References in corpus (4)

• Broken time-reversal symmetry in strongly correlated ladder structures
• On the sign structure of doped Mott insulators
• Pairing versus phase coherence of doped holes in distinct quantum spin backgrounds
• Charge modulation as fingerprints of phase-string triggered interference

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• Parton theory of ARPES spectra in anti-ferromagnetic Mott insulators
• Critical role of the sign structure in the doped Mott insulator: Superconductivity vs. Fermi liquid
• Hidden spin current in doped Mott antiferromagnets
• Proposal for asymmetric photoemission and tunneling spectroscopies in quantum simulators of the triangular-lattice Fermi-Hubbard model
• The spectral function of Mott-insulating Hubbard ladders: From fractionalized excitations to coherent quasi-particles
• Sign structure of the $t$-$t^{\prime }$-$J$ model and its physical consequences
• Localization in a $t$-$J$ type ladder with translational symmetry
• Superconductivity in doped triangular Mott insulators: the roles of parent spin backgrounds and charge kinetic energy
• Phenomenological Single-Particle Green's Function for the Pseudogap and Superconducting Phases of High-T${}_c$ Cuprates
• Spin Texture in Doped Mott Insulators with Spin-Orbit Coupling
• Mottness, Phase String, and High-$T_c$ Superconductivity
• Continuous transition from a Landau quasiparticle to a neutral spinon
• Mean Field Study of Superconductivity in the Square Lattice $t$-$J$ Model with Three-Site Hopping