Pairing of holes by confining strings in antiferromagnets

Abstract

In strongly correlated quantum materials, the behavior of charge carriers is dominated by strong electron-electron interactions. These can lead to insulating states with spin order, and upon doping to competing ordered states including unconventional superconductivity. The underlying pairing mechanism remains poorly understood however, even in strongly simplified theoretical models. Recent advances in quantum simulation allow to study pairing in paradigmatic settings, e.g. in the $t-J$ and $t-J_z$ Hamiltonians. Even there, the most basic properties of paired states of only two dopants, such as their dispersion relation and excitation spectra, remain poorly studied in many cases. Here we provide new analytical insights into a possible string-based pairing mechanism of mobile holes in an antiferromagnet. We analyze an effective model of partons connected by a confining string and calculate the spectral properties of bound states. Our model is equally relevant for understanding Hubbard-Mott excitons consisting of a bound doublon-hole pair or confined states of dynamical matter in lattice gauge theories, which motivates our study of different parton statistics. Although an accurate semi-analytic estimation of binding energies is challenging, our theory provides a detailed understanding of the internal structure of pairs. For example, in a range of settings we predict heavy states of immobile pairs with flat-band dispersions -- including for the lowest-energy $d$-wave pair of fermions. Our findings shed new light on the long-standing question about the origin of pairing and competing orders in high-temperature superconductors.

17 pages, 12 figures, 2 appendices

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Cited by in corpus (11)

• Metal-insulator transition and magnetism of SU(3) fermions in the square lattice
• A Hubbard exciton fluid in a photo-doped antiferromagnetic Mott insulator
• Dichotomy of heavy and light pairs of holes in the $t-J$ model
• Feshbach hypothesis of high-Tc superconductivity in cuprates
• Scattering theory of mesons in doped antiferromagnetic Mott insulators: Multichannel perspective and Feshbach resonance
• Omnipresent bound state of two holes in antiferromagnetic Bethe lattices
• Fractionalized Fermi liquids and the cuprate phase diagram
• Observation of excitons bound by antiferromagnetic correlations
• Attraction versus repulsion between doublons or holons in Mott-Hubbard systems
• Exploring kinetically induced bound states in triangular lattices with ultracold atoms: spectroscopic approach
• Magnetic correlations in the $SU(3)$ triangular-lattice $t$-$J$ model at finite doping