Self-localization of holes in a lightly doped Mott insulator

摘要

We show that lightly doped holes will be self-trapped in an antiferromagneticspin background at low-temperatures, resulting in a spontaneous translationalsymmetry breaking. The underlying Mott physics is responsible for such novelself-localization of charge carriers. Interesting transport and dielectricproperties are found as the consequences, including large doping-dependentthermopower and dielectric constant, low-temperature variable-range-hoppingresistivity, as well as high-temperature strange-metal-like resistivity, whichare consistent with experimental measurements in the high-T$_c$ cuprates.Disorder and impurities only play a minor and assistant role here.