Magnon Splitting Induced by Charge Transfer in the Three-Orbital Hubbard Model

TL;DR

This study uses the three-orbital Hubbard model to analyze how charge transfer influences magnon splitting and spin excitation dispersion, providing insights into high-temperature superconductivity mechanisms.

Contribution

It systematically evaluates the dynamical spin structure factor, revealing the impact of charge-transfer energy and structural variations on magnon splitting in cuprates.

Findings

Magnon splitting decreases with increasing charge-transfer energy.

Spin excitation energy scale is sensitive to charge-transfer energy.

Structural variations influence magnon dispersion and splitting.

Abstract

Understanding spin excitations and their connection to unconventional superconductivity have remained a central issue since the discovery of the cuprates. Direct measurement of the dynamical spin structure factor in the parent compounds can provide key information on important interactions relevant in the doped regime, and variations in the magnon dispersion have been linked closely to differences in crystal structure between families of cuprate compounds. Here, we elucidate the relationship between spin excitations and various controlling factors thought to be significant in high-$T_c$ materials by systematically evaluating the dynamical spin structure factor for the three-orbital Hubbard model, revealing differences in the spin dispersion along the Brillouin zone axis and the diagonal. Generally, we find that the absolute energy scale and momentum dependence of the excitations primarily are sensitive to the effective charge-transfer energy, while changes in the on-site Coulomb interactions have little effect on the details of the dispersion. In particular, our result highlights the splitting between spin excitations along the axial and diagonal directions in the Brillouin zone. This splitting decreases with increasing charge-transfer energy and correlates with changes in the apical oxygen position, and general structural variations, for different cuprate families.