Superconducting ground state of a doped Mott insulator

TL;DR

This paper proposes a new theoretical superconducting ground state for doped Mott insulators, characterized by explicit separation of pairing mechanisms and electron fractionalization, with implications for understanding cuprate superconductors.

Contribution

It introduces a novel class of wavefunctions that distinguish between Cooper pairing and RVB pairing, incorporating electron fractionalization and mutual Chern-Simons gauge fields.

Findings

Identifies a superconducting ground state satisfying the t-J model's sign structure.

Characterizes elementary excitations, including a conventional Bogoliubov quasiparticle and two non-BCS neutral excitations.

Discusses potential experimental signatures relevant to cuprate superconductors.

Abstract

A d-wave superconducting ground state for a doped Mott insulator is obtained. It is distinguished from a Gutzwiller-projected BCS superconductor by an explicit separation of Cooper pairing and resonating valence bond (RVB) pairing. Such a state satisfies the precise sign structure of the t-J model, just like that a BCS state satisfies the Fermi-Dirac statistics. This new class of wavefunctions can be intrinsically characterized and effectively manipulated by electron fractionalization with neutral spinons and backflow spinons forming a two-component RVB structure. While the former spinon is bosonic, originated from the superexchange correlation, the latter spinon is found to be fermionic, accompanying the hopping of bosonic holons. The low-lying emergent gauge fields associated with such a specific fractionalization are of mutual Chern-Simons type. Corresponding to this superconducting ground state, three types of elementary excitations are identified. Among them a Bogoliubov nodal quasiparticle is conventional, while the other two are neutral excitations of non-BCS type that play crucial roles in higher energy/temperaure regimes. Their unique experimental implications for the cuprates are briefly discussed.