Mobile impurity approach to the optical conductivity in the Hubbard chain

Abstract

We consider the optical conductivity in the one dimensional Hubbard model in the metallic phase close to half filling. In this regime most of the spectral weight is located at frequencies above an energy scale $E_{\rm opt}$ that tends towards the optical gap in the Mott insulating phase for vanishing doping. Using the Bethe Ansatz we relate $E_{\rm opt}$ to thresholds of particular kinds of excitations in the Hubbard model. We then employ a mobile impurity models to analyze the optical conductivity for frequencies slightly above these thresholds. This entails generalizing mobile impurity models to excited states that are not highest weight with regards to the SU(2) symmetries of the Hubbard chain, and that occur at a maximum of the impurity dispersion.