Spin and charge modulations in a single-hole-doped Hubbard ladder: Verification with optical lattice experiments

Abstract

We show that pronounced modulations in spin and charge densities can be induced by the insertion of a single hole in an otherwise half-filled two-leg Hubbard ladder. Accompanied with these modulations is a loosely bound structure of the doped charge with a spin-1/2, in contrast to the tightly bound case where such modulations are absent. These behaviors are caused by the interference of the Berry phases associated with a string of flipped spins (or “phase strings”) left behind as a hole travels through a spin bath with a short-range antiferromagnetic order. The key role of the phase strings is also reflected in how the system responds to increasing spin polarization and the on-site repulsion, addition of a second hole, and increasing asymmetry between intra- and interchain hopping. Remarkably, all these properties persist down to ladders as short as ∼10 sites, as the smoking gun of the phase-string effect. They can therefore be studied in cold-atom experiments using the recently developed fermion microscope.