Pairing and excitation spectrum in doped<i>t</i>-<i>J</i>ladders

Abstract

Exact-diagonalization studies for a doped t-J ladder (or double chain) show hole pairing in the ground state. The excitation spectrum separates into a limited number of quasiparticles which carry charge +\ensuremath{\Vert}e\ensuremath{\Vert} and spin 1/2 and a triplet mode. At half-filling the former vanish but the latter evolves continuously into the triplet band of the spin liquid. At low doping the quasiparticles form a dilute Fermi gas with a strong attraction but simultaneously the Fermi wave vector, as would be measured in photoemission, is large.