Eur. Phys. J. B 47, 37-46 (2005)
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjb/e2005-00300-7

Self-localization of holes in a lightly doped Mott insulator

¹ Department of Physics, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, 100875, P.R. China
² Center for Advanced Study, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084, P.R. China

Corresponding author: ^a spkou@mit.edu

Received: 17 January 2005
Revised: 12 May 2005
Published online: 21 September 2005

Abstract

We show that lightly doped holes will be self-trapped in an antiferromagnetic spin background at low-temperature, resulting in 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.