
Dichotomy of heavy and light pairs of holes in the t−Jmodel
A. Bohrdt,1, 2, 3, 4, ∗E. Demler,5and F. Grusdt6, 7
1ITAMP, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA
2Department of Physics, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA
3Institut f¨ur Theoretische Physik, Universit¨at Regensburg, D-93035 Regensburg, Germany
4Munich Center for Quantum Science and Technology (MCQST), D-80799 M¨unchen, Germany
5Institut f¨ur Theoretische Physik, ETH Zurich, 8093 Zurich, Switzerland
6Department of Physics and Arnold Sommerfeld Center for Theoretical Physics (ASC),
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universit¨at M¨unchen, Theresienstr. 37, M¨unchen D-80333, Germany
7Munich Center for Quantum Science and Technology (MCQST), Schellingstr. 4, D-80799 M¨unchen, Germany
(Dated: July 24, 2023)
A key step in unraveling the mysteries of materials exhibiting unconventional superconductivity
is to understand the underlying pairing mechanism. While it is widely agreed upon that the pairing
glue in many of these systems originates from antiferromagnetic spin correlations [1–3], a microscopic
description of pairs of charge carriers remains lacking. Here we use state-of-the art numerical
methods to probe the internal structure and dynamical properties of pairs of charge carriers in
quantum antiferromagnets in four-legged cylinders. Exploiting the full momentum resolution in our
simulations, we are able to distinguish two qualitatively different types of bound states: a highly
mobile, meta-stable pair, which has a dispersion proportional to the hole hopping t, and a heavy
pair, which can only move due to spin exchange processes and turns into a flat band in the Ising
limit of the model. Understanding the pairing mechanism can on the one hand pave the way to
boosting binding energies in related models [4], and on the other hand enable insights into the
intricate competition of various phases of matter in strongly correlated electron systems [5,6].
Introduction.– Following the discovery of high tem-
perature superconductivity in the cuprates, understand-
ing the mechanism by which pairs of charge carriers can
form in a system with repulsive interactions has been a
key question in the field. Motivated by experimental re-
sults on the cuprate materials, a lot of theoretical and
numerical work has focused on identifying the potential
pairing symmetry [7,8] as well as the binding energies
in these microscopic models [9,10]. Despite a vast re-
search effort over several decades, the existence of a su-
perconducting phase in the simplest model describing in-
teracting electrons, the Fermi-Hubbard model, remains
debated [6]. Competing orders, such as charge density
waves and stripes, contribute to the difficulty in realizing
as well as understanding superconductivity [5]. In order
to unravel the competition between different orders, and
thus the conditions for the existence of a superconduct-
ing phase, it is essential to gain a deeper understanding
of the nature of individual pairs of charge carriers. The
existence of pairs close to half-filling does not imply that
for a finite density of holes, the system necessarily realizes
ad-wave paired state. Instead, a finite number of charge
carriers can for example self-organize into a charge or pair
density wave state [11]. However, understanding whether
and how pairs form in the two-hole problem is crucial
to the subsequent understanding of self-organization of
many holes.
Here we approach the question of the underlying bind-
ing mechanism from a new perspective: through novel
∗Corresponding author email: annabelle.bohrdt@physik.uni-
regensburg.de
spectroscopic tools, we search for bound states of charge
carriers in a quantum antiferromagnet and directly probe
their internal structure. In particular, we numerically
simulate rotational two-hole spectra, where different an-
gular momenta can be imparted on the system, using
time-dependent matrix product states. Crucially, these
rotational spectra go beyond the standard pairing corre-
lations through the momentum resolution they provide.
The momentum dependence of the peaks in the spectral
function enables direct insights into the effective mass
of the pairs, which is an essential property for under-
standing their ability to condense at finite doping and
temperature.
We study pairing between two individual holes doped
into the two-dimensional t−Jmodel, which corresponds
to the enigmatic Fermi-Hubbard model to second order in
t/U (up to next-nearest neighbor hopping terms, where
Uis the on-site interaction) and describes electrons in
cuprates [12]:
ˆ
Ht−J=−tˆ
PX
⟨i,j⟩X
σˆc†
i,σ ˆcj,σ + h.c.ˆ
P+
+JX
⟨i,j⟩
ˆ
Si·ˆ
Sj−J
4X
⟨i,j⟩
ˆniˆnj,(1)
where ˆ
Pprojects to the subspace with maximum sin-
gle occupancy per site; ˆ
Sjand ˆnjdenote the on-site
spin and density operators, respectively. In our numer-
ical simulations, we consider a 40 site long, four-legged
cylinder, which is sufficiently long to ensure that the two-
hole wavefront in the time-evolution we consider below
does not reach the edges of the system. This also means
that the thermodynamic limit is essentially reached in
arXiv:2210.02322v2 [cond-mat.str-el] 21 Jul 2023