TY - JOUR
T1 - Nonconservation of fermionic degrees of freedom at low energy in doped Mott insulators
AU - Chakraborty, Shiladitya
AU - Hong, Seungmin
AU - Phillips, Philip
PY - 2010/6/29
Y1 - 2010/6/29
N2 - Hall and optical conductivity experiments on the cuprates indicate that the low-energy fermionic degrees of freedom in a doped Mott insulator possess a component that is dynamically generated and hence determined by the temperature. We show explicitly how the spectrum in the lower Hubbard band should be partitioned to describe such dynamically generated charge degrees of freedom and corroborate this picture with the results from the exact low-energy theory of the Hubbard model. A consequence of such dynamics is that the Landau one-to-one correspondence between bare electrons and the effective fermionic degrees of freedom at low energies breaks down explicitly. This state of affairs obtains because the total hole number is not conserved as it contains a dynamical contribution. We propose that any experimental probe that couples to the low-energy dynamics of a doped Mott insulator, quantum oscillation experiments included, should be interpreted in terms of the total dynamically generated hole number rather than the bare value.
AB - Hall and optical conductivity experiments on the cuprates indicate that the low-energy fermionic degrees of freedom in a doped Mott insulator possess a component that is dynamically generated and hence determined by the temperature. We show explicitly how the spectrum in the lower Hubbard band should be partitioned to describe such dynamically generated charge degrees of freedom and corroborate this picture with the results from the exact low-energy theory of the Hubbard model. A consequence of such dynamics is that the Landau one-to-one correspondence between bare electrons and the effective fermionic degrees of freedom at low energies breaks down explicitly. This state of affairs obtains because the total hole number is not conserved as it contains a dynamical contribution. We propose that any experimental probe that couples to the low-energy dynamics of a doped Mott insulator, quantum oscillation experiments included, should be interpreted in terms of the total dynamically generated hole number rather than the bare value.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=77956304255&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=77956304255&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1103/PhysRevB.81.235135
DO - 10.1103/PhysRevB.81.235135
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:77956304255
SN - 1098-0121
VL - 81
JO - Physical Review B - Condensed Matter and Materials Physics
JF - Physical Review B - Condensed Matter and Materials Physics
IS - 23
M1 - 235135
ER -