Abstract
Understanding what controls the dynamics of the quasiparticle that results when a hole is doped into an antiferromagnetically ordered CuO2 layer is the first necessary step in the quest for a theory of the high-temperature superconductivity in cuprates. Here we show that the long-held belief that the quantum spin fluctuations of the antiferromagnetic background play a key role in determining this dynamics is wrong. Indeed, we demonstrate that the correct, experimentally observed quasiparticle dispersion is generically obtained for a three-band model describing the hole moving on the oxygen sublattice and coupled to a Néel lattice of spins without spin fluctuations. We argue that results from one-band model studies actually support this conclusion, and that this significant conceptual change in our understanding of this phenomenology opens the way to studying few-hole dynamics, to accurately gauge the strength of the ‘magnetic glue’ and its contribution to superconductivity.
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Acknowledgements
We thank B. Lau and W. Metzner for insightful comments. This work was funded by NSERC, QMI and CIfAR.
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H.E. and M.B. performed the numerical calculations. All authors contributed to the data analysis and the writing of the manuscript.
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Ebrahimnejad, H., Sawatzky, G. & Berciu, M. The dynamics of a doped hole in a cuprate is not controlled by spin fluctuations. Nature Phys 10, 951–955 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphys3130
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nphys3130
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