Relationship between doping-induced in-gap states and spin excitations in Kitaev-Hubbard models

Abstract

We investigate the connection between doping-induced in-gap states and underlying spin excitations in Mott insulators by employing cluster perturbation theory on one-dimensional (1D) and quasi-1D Kitaev-Hubbard models. By manipulating Kitaev-like hopping terms ($t^{\prime}$) that selectively control spin anisotropies in the strong-coupling limit, we establish a direct correspondence between the kinetic dispersion of the in-gap states and the spin excitation spectra. Specifically, in the Z chain, in-gap states evolve from a gapless dispersion to a gapped flat band as the system transitions from the Heisenberg to the Ising model, exhibiting a gap scaling of $2t^{\prime 2}/U$ that matches the Ising spin gap. In the XY chain, the in-gap states split into a dispersive and a flat branch at the Kitaev limit, perfectly mirroring the Jordan-Wigner fermionic spectrum. For the two-leg ladder, we observe an emergent broad continuum of in-gap states that reflects the fractionalization of spin excitations, accompanied by a gap manifesting the presence of topological $Z_2$ visons. Our results establish a robust correspondence between charge and spin dynamics in doped Mott insulators and demonstrate that in-gap states can serve as a probe of exotic quantum spin phenomena, including fractionalization and topological excitations, offering a new pathway to investigate spin liquids via spectroscopic probes of charge excitations.