Hourglass-Like Spin Excitation in a Doped Mott Insulator

TL;DR

This paper models the spin excitation spectrum in doped Mott insulators using a two-component RVB framework, revealing an hourglass-like dispersion that aligns with experimental observations in cuprates.

Contribution

It introduces a novel two-component RVB model that explains the hourglass spin excitation in doped Mott insulators, connecting theory with experimental data.

Findings

Reveals hourglass-like spin excitation spectrum

Shows instability towards incommensurate magnetic order

Provides an unconventional explanation for cuprate experiments

Abstract

We examine the dynamical magnetic response in a two-component resonating-valence-bond (RVB) description of the doped Mott insulator. The half-filled antiferromagnetic phase described by the Schwinger-boson mean-field theory will evolve into a bosonic-RVB state in the superconducting phase upon doping, where the doped holes introduce another fermionic itinerant spinon which forms a BCS-like RVB order. The spin excitations are thus composed of a resonance-like mode from the former and a weak dispersive mode from the itinerant component at the mean-field level. These two-component spinons are shown to give rise to an hourglass-like spin excitation at the RPA level via an antiferromagnetic coupling between the two modes, which provides an unconventional explanation of the experimental observations in the cuprate. In particular, we also discuss an instability towards an incommensurate magnetic order in this theoretical framework.