Variational Monte Carlo Study of the Doped $t$-$J$ Model on Honeycomb Lattice

Abstract

The ground state of the bipartite $t$-$J$ model must satisfy a specific sign structure, based on which the single-hole and two-hole ground state $Ans\ddot{a}tze$ on honeycomb lattice are constructed and studied by a variational Monte Carlo (VMC) method. The VMC results are in good agreement with the exact diagonalization (ED) calculation. For the single-hole case, the degenerate ground states are characterized by quantum numbers of a spin-1/2 and an orbital angular momentum $L_z=\pm 2$. The latter is associated with the emergent chiral spin/hole currents mutually surrounding the hole/spin-1/2 as a composite object or ``twisted hole''. A vanishing quasiparticle spectral weight is shown in the large-sample limit. In the two-hole ground state, the holes form a spin-singlet pairing with $d$+$id$ symmetry in the Cooper channel, but are of $s$-wave symmetry as a tightly bound pair of the ``twisted holes''. Such a pairing mechanism of dichotomy can be attributed to eliminating the local spin currents which has nothing to do with the long-range antiferromagnetic correlation. Superconducting ground state at finite doping is briefly discussed in terms of the tightly bound hole pairs as the building blocks.