Self-localization of holes in a lightly doped Mott insulator

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that in lightly doped Mott insulators, holes tend to self-trap due to antiferromagnetic interactions, leading to unique transport properties and symmetry breaking, aligning with experimental observations in high-Tc cuprates.

Contribution

It reveals a mechanism for hole self-localization driven by Mott physics, explaining various anomalous transport phenomena in lightly doped cuprates.

Findings

Holes self-trap in antiferromagnetic backgrounds at low temperatures.

Transport properties include large thermopower and dielectric constants.

Resistivity exhibits variable-range hopping and strange-metal behavior.

Abstract

We show that lightly doped holes will be self-trapped in an antiferromagnetic spin background at low-temperatures, resulting in a spontaneous translational symmetry breaking. The underlying Mott physics is responsible for such novel self-localization of charge carriers. Interesting transport and dielectric properties are found as the consequences, including large doping-dependent thermopower and dielectric constant, low-temperature variable-range-hopping resistivity, as well as high-temperature strange-metal-like resistivity, which are consistent with experimental measurements in the high-T$_c$ cuprates. Disorder and impurities only play a minor and assistant role here.