Superconductivity, Faraday effect, and optical absorption in the commensurate flux phase of the t-J model

Abstract

Using a large-N slave-boson formulation of the t-J model on the square lattice that has explicit spinon-holon decoupling of the correlated electron, we study the stability and electromagnetic response of the commensurate flux phase in the limit near half filling. A region of stability for the flux phase is found located between a dimer phase region near half filling and a fluxless metallic phase region far from half filling. The commensurate flux phase itself is found to be a superconductor of the anyon type. Furthermore, it is shown that the parity–time-reversal–violating characteristic of this phase results in a frequency-dependent Faraday effect. This effect manifests itself as a zero-field Hall effect in the low-frequency limit, where the off-diagonal conductance scales with the hole concentration. Associated with this result, it is also found that the commensurate flux phase supports a series of optical absorption peaks at energies on the order of J. Lastly, inclusion of instanton tunneling events in the effective gauge-field action results in the confinement of the spinon and holon degrees of freedom. This confinement effect, however, weakens exponentially as one approaches the Mott transition. The present results are discussed in the context of the high-Tc superconducting oxides.

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