Unconventional normal-state spin dynamics in underdoped high-Tc cuprates as a fingerprint of spiral correlations of localized spins and dual localized/itinerant nature of spin fluctuations

Abstract

The paper is motivated by the observation of unusual and not well understood spin dynamics in low- and moderately doped high-Tc cuprates as well as by the discovery in these materials of a static incommensurate order for doping exceeding the insulator-metal boundary in the phase diagram. We develop a microscopic approach that allows us to treat accurately the quantum fluctuations in the spiral state developing upon doping the Mott-Neel insulator. We show that the spiral order of localized spins induces an off-diagonal order of mobile charges and a gap Δ∝|Q| in their spectrum (Q is the spiral incommensurability wave vector defined with respect to QAF). Due to the dynamic spin-charge interaction the latter gap produces a feedback effect consisting in the appearence of a gap in the coherent spin excitation spectrum. As a result, the characteristic energy ωc=Δ appears, in the spin excitation spectra. It separates two components with qualitatively different behavior–above ωc, spin excitations are magnonlike and have an upward dispersion, below it, they are of the relaxation type and have a slight downward dispersion. The form of the dispersion is close to the form observed experimentally (by inelastic neutron scattering), which can be characterized as OPEN-hour-glass shaped or Y-shaped. There is no qualitative difference between the spin dynamics in the normal and SC states as far as doping is relatively low. There is no resonance. Other important features, including the incommensurability and uniaxial anisotropy of the low-energy spin excitations and the doping dependencies of the characteristic energy and wave vectors, are also close to those observed experimentally in low-doped cuprates. We show that the static spiral state becomes unstable at the critical doping nc. We show also that adopting the hypothesis about the presence of finite-energy spiral correlations in the paramagnetic state above nc and based on the results obtained for the static spiral state, it is possible to understand the spin dynamics observed in the so-called pseudogap state as well as the tendencies of the doping evolution of spin excitations in cuprates from low to high doping.

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