Phase diagram of the two-dimensional t--J model at low doping

Abstract

The phase diagram of the planar t--J model at small hole doping is investigated by finite size scaling of exact diagonalisation data of NXN clusters (up to 26). Hole-droplet binding energies, compressibility and static spin and charge correlations are calculated. Short range antiferromagnetic correlations can produce attractive forces between holes leading to a very rich phase diagram including a liquid of d-wave hole pairs (for $J/t\gtrsim 0.2$), a liquid of hole droplets (quartets) for larger J/t ratios ($J/t\gtrsim 0.5$) and, at even larger coupling J/t, an instability towards phase separation.