A single hole in a quantum antiferromagnet: selfconsistent Green’s function approach

Abstract

We solved numerically the integral equation for the selfenergy which describes the motion of a single hole in a two-dimensional quantum antiferromagnet (AF) within the selfconsistent Born approximation. This formulation stresses the similarity of the AF-spin polaron with the standard polaron problem. We confine our calculation to finite cluster geometries and compare with results from previous exact diagonalization studies. The spectral function is characterized by a narrow quasiparticle (qp) peak at the low energy side of the spectra, which appears to be well separated from the incoherent band part for large enough J values. For small J we find a reduced width of ~7t for the incoherent band. The bottom of the coherent qp band always occurs at (±π/2, ±π/2). Its bandwidth initially increases with J until J≃t and then decreases as 2t2/J. A complete characterization of our solution is given, including the dispersion relation and effective masses of this quasiparticle. The comparison with exact diagonalization studies for a 4×4 cluster is remarkably good. From our results we see that a lattice of 16×16 sites describes adequately the thermodynamic limit. We conclude that the simple Born approximation is a valuable scheme to characterize the dynamics of one hole in the t-J model. both in the perturbative and the strong coupling regimes.