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# Kinetic energy driven stripe formation and pairing in repulsive electronic systems

## I Introduction

The current work constitutes an updated version of ideas and results concerning the possibility of “kinetically driven confinement” in the cuprate superconductors that we introduced in \[us2002, \]. Three decades have passed since the discovery of these high-$`T_c`$ superconductors. BM86  Although much has been learned since, there is still no satisfactory explanation of what causes the superconductivity. There is a widespread belief that it should be possible to describe many electronic properties of the square CuO2 lattices by the bare two-dimensional repulsive Hubbard type model jh ; h1  when endowed with additional longer range hopping terms and interactions,

$$H=t\underset{ij\sigma }{}(c_{i\sigma }^{}c_{j\sigma }+c_{i\sigma }^{}c_{j\sigma })+U\underset{i}{}n_in_i+\mathrm{},$$
(1)
where $`c_{i\sigma }^{}`$ creates an electron on site $`i`$ having a spin component $`\sigma `$. The number operators $`n_{i\sigma }=c_{i\sigma }^{}c_{i\sigma }`$. In its original bare incarnation (sans the additional terms denoted by an ellipsis in Eqn. (1)) jh , the Hubbard model contains both the hopping of electrons between neighboring sites ($`t`$) and a repulsive on-site Coulomb energy penalty ($`U`$). The Hubbard model is one of the simplest possible models of interacting electrons. The main problem is then finding the possible solutions of this model. This however has proven not to be an easy task. The Hilbert space of the model is too large for exact numerical solutions. Away from half filling, Monte Carlo simulations have the minus sign problem. $`U`$ is approximately equal to $`8t`$, so we are neither in an extremely strong, nor in a weakly interacting limit. Therefore, standard perturbative techniques may be of limited use. Intense investigations employing high temperature series expansions, infinite dimensional dynamical mean field results, renormalization group calculations, exact quantum Monte Carlo calculations at half-filling, and various approximate numerical approaches have employed to the study of this model h1 ; study1 ; study2 ; study3 ; study4 ; study5 ; study6 ; study7 ; study8 ; study9 ; study10 ; study11 ; WS . In the limit of large $`U/t`$, a perturbative expansion relates the Hubbard model to another extremely well studied system, the so-called “$`tJ`$ model” tj' ,

$`H_{tJ}=t{\displaystyle \underset{ij,\sigma }{}}(c_{i,\sigma }^{}c_{j,\sigma }+H.c.)+J{\displaystyle \underset{ij}{}}\stackrel{}{S}_i\stackrel{}{S}_j.`$ (2)
Here, $`\stackrel{}{S}_i=_{\sigma \sigma ^{}}c_{i\sigma }^{}\stackrel{}{\sigma }_{\sigma ,\sigma ^{}}c_{i,\sigma ^{}}`$ denotes the electron spin operator at site $`i`$ (the vector $`\stackrel{}{\sigma }`$ represents the Pauli matrices). The number operator $`n_i=n_i+n_i`$. The $`tJ`$ model Hamiltonian of Eqn. (2) is defined on a Hilbert space in which $`n_i1`$. To leading order in a perturbative expansion of the Hubbard model in $`(t/U)`$, the exchange $`J`$ in Eqn. (2) is $`J=\frac{4t^2}{U}`$. Away from the regime of large $`U/t`$ (far from the antiferromagnetic phase), the $`tJ`$ model is quite distinct from the Hubbard model. Variants of the $`tJ`$ model (including the “$`tJ_z`$” model) are known gerardo  (and in some cases, e.g., I1  can be rigorously demonstrated) to exhibit intricate correlations and structures including paricular “stripe orders” that will form the focus of the current work. Many aspects of the $`tJ`$, Hubbard, and other related models have been investigated throughout the years sri ; other1 . Numerically, energy differences between contending low energy stripe and other states are often found to be small , e.g., corboz . Disputes appear in the literature as to which of the suggested states are more accurate and of lower energy. For irrational doping fractions in related systems, the stripes may form quasi-crystalline structures with gapless excitations eranzohar . The large number of contending low energy states and associated conflgurational entropy suggest that glassy dynamics might be possible sw ; zis . In order to obtain results using simple illuminating analysis, that do not rely on elaborate calculations, and may rather universally rationalize the appearance of low energy stripe like structures, we will invoke simplifications. The main assumption that we will rely on (and establish in the appendix) is that, when lightly doped, these systems are endowed with sublattice constraints on the kinematics. The nearly degenerate states of pristine Hubbard or $`tJ`$ models with no additional terms may be of academic interest. A broader approach, such as the one that we follow here, centers on a prominent effect captured by these systems. In the current work, we will, for concreteness, perform simple calculations applied to Hubbard models. Our considerations may apply to a broader class of systems that have a bipartite Néel antiferromagnetic (or other) background that imposes restrictions on hole dynamics.

Stripes were first detected in cupratestranquada  in the famous neutron scattering experiment of Tranquada and coworkers. Earlier theoretical approaches already predicted stripes before their experimental discovery jan ; steve . Various aspects have been investigated by numerous works, e.g., mya ; seamus . Notably, similar phenomena and viable physical underpinning may also appear in further unconventional (pnictide and other) superconductors different from the cuprates, e.g., seamus . A plot of the incommensuration as a function of doping (the Yamada plot), which is a straight line from 0 to 0.125 doping with a slope of $`1/4`$ yamada , indicates that stripes may be quarter filled. DMRG calculations by White and Scalapino WS  have further indicated that the ground-state for stripes in the $`t`$-$`J`$ model is approximately quarter-filled. In the intervening years, many additional facets having been discovered. Related issues that have become the focus of intense investigations include the specter nematic orders and the relation between stripes, nematic order, and superconductivity vojta ; Achkar . Aside from the initial appearance of the current work us2002  on stripes within Hubbard type models, there have been many works that attempted to relate stripes and related charge, spin, and pair density wave and nematic orders as well as superconducting tendencies h1 ; sco1 ; sco2 ; sco3 ; sco4 ; Gull ; sco5 ; sco6 ; sco7 ; sco8 ; sco9 ; sco10 ; sco11 ; sco12 ; sco13 ; sco14 ; sco15 ; sco16 ; sco17 ; sco18 ; sco19 ; sco20 ; sco21 ; sco22 ; sco23 ; sco24 ; comin ; bosch  to these models. In an offshoot of this paper, we detail a possible reason why stripes are quarter-filled us2 . As alluded to above, the principal goal of the current work is to rationalize how the square lattice Hubbard model of Eqn. (1) is amenable to stripe formation and pairing. As we will expand on, our guiding principle is that of a sub lattice constraint on hole motion; this constraint is expected to arise in bipartite systems that display Néel like order in their half-filled state (the state in which there is one electron per lattice site). We will see that this will kinetically favor the formation on stripes structures in which the holes aggregate together in intricate the domain well stripe structures so as to allow nearest neighbor hopping along the stripe. As our point of departure relies on the constraints imposed by an antiferromagnetic background, our considerations cannot be extended to certain pyrochlore lattice and other Hubbard type systems that do not exhibit conventional antiferromagnetic Néel orders but instead exhibit spin liquid or other ground states nn2015 ; pyron . In this paper, we will assume from the outset that bond-centered stripes (stripes with the geometry of two leg ladders) form antiphase domain walls in a surrounding Néel type antiferromagnetic background and demonstrate how self consistent localized eigenstates and pairing follow from this assumption.

## II outline

The remainder of this work is organized as follows: In Section (III), we introduce the sublattice principle which will form the backbone of our analysis. In order to streamline the quintessential physics, we will be brief in exposing this principle. For further details regarding the underpinnings of this principle, the interested reader may peruse Appendix A. Invoking the sublattice principle, we will show in Section (V) how exponentially localized wavefunctions will be found when we assume, self consistently, that stripes form antiphase domain walls. We will find that the transverse stripe scale is of the order of the lattice constant. What drives stripe formation in our picture are not confining magnetic string potentials, but a rather novel kinetic effect which we term dynamical confinement.

Once we establish, self consistently, that bond centered stripes form domain walls in the surrounding antiferromagnet, we will move in small steps towards examining further microscopics. As we will explain in Section (VI), we will consider a bond centered stripe engulfed by a surrounding antiferromagnetic region as a two leg ladder immersed in an external staggered magnetic field. We will then consider the problem of a single electron on a staggered empty two leg ladder (Section (VII)) which will facilitate the analysis of a single hole on an otherwise full staggered two leg ladder (Section (VIII)). Both problems will lead to similar results.

This will be followed by a similar analysis for a two electron system on an empty staggered ladder and the inverted problem of two holes on a full staggered ladder, in Sections (IX) and (X) respectively. The surprising conclusion is that in this case there is an essential difference between electrons and holes. Numerically, we find that for holes, pair states are slightly favored over single hole states although the correlations are very faint.

Having shown how narrow bond centered stripes with bound pair states emerge, in Section (XII) we fuse all of our finding together to reconstruct earlier suggested stripe patterns found by DMRG, mean-field, and many other methods.

In Section (XIII), we will examine the effects of longer range Coulomb effects and additional longer range kinetic terms to show how much of our self consistent analysis can easily be fortified by the addition of such terms.

## III The Sublattice Parity Principle

As has long been appreciated h1 ; study1 ; study2 ; study3 ; study4 ; study5 ; study6 ; study7 ; study8 ; study9 ; study10 ; study11 ; WS ; vojta ; Achkar ; sco1 ; sco2 ; sco3 ; sco4 ; Gull ; sco5 ; sco6 ; sco7 ; sco8 ; sco9 ; sco10 ; sco11 ; sco12 ; sco13 ; sco14 ; sco15 ; sco16 ; sco17 ; sco18 ; sco19 ; sco20 ; sco21 ; sco22 ; sco23 ; sco24 ; comin ; bosch , the problem posed by the two-dimensional Hubbard model of Eqn. (1) is very rich. To make progress in a cogent way, in this article, we will invoke the simplifying assumption that much of the low energy physics of holes in a strong antiferromagnetic background can be summed in a nutshell:

Holes can only move in steps of two.
This principle is equivalent to the omission of spin flips, waves, and string states. This sublattice parity principle is, of course, a gross oversimplification- the physics of hole motion in an antiferromagnetic is a fascinating and rich topic. Nonetheless, the low energy single hole dispersion curves (requiring careful extensive numerical work) coincide very well with those immediately following from this principle. For a review of this often overlooked principle, the reader is invited to read Appendix (A).

Stated in formal terms, the principle amounts to $`Z_2`$ order, which has lately been much discussed in the context of its viable destruction zohar .

Many beautiful works exist on the subject of stripe formation and dynamics erica . Hole dynamics on the stripe has been primarily addressed in terms of spinon-holon excitations, as in the works of Tchernyshyov and Pryadko pryadko . In this article we do not assume that the elementary excitations are spinons and holons. Our approach is closer in spirit to the very interesting work of Chernyshev, White, and Castro Neto strings , which aim to answer the same fundamental questions concerning stripes. Their work examines the elementary excitations within the framework of the $`t`$-$`J_z`$ model by examining retraceable paths of a hole out of the stripe into the surrounding antiferromagnet. We arrive at much of the same physics using the sublattice parity principle as our only guide. Our derivations are much more pedestrian yet physically transparent as compared to the detailed Green’s function and numerical DMRG analysis carried out by these authors.

Many works place much emphasis on the string states created by hole motion or on kinks wim . In our low energy analysis, there are no string states. For a discussion on how string states can be avoided and for a demonstration that they do not dominate the low energy physics, the reader is referred to Appendix (A). Similarly, the role of a domain wall in an antiferromagnet as an effective attractive potential for holes simply by the bad ferromagnetic magnetic bonds that they remove, and the careful interplay between string states and transverse and longitudinal hole kinetics is not what we consider here. A large body of literature complements our simple asymptotic low energy analysis.

## IV A Bond centered stripe in the antiferromagnet

Fig. (1) shows the system which we will be looking at. We will examine the anatomy of a bond-centered stripe in an antiferromagnetic background. As foretold, we will neglect spin-flips and assume the background to be a perfect Néel antiferromagnet. We will further assume that there is a phase-shift in the staggered antiferromagnetic order parameter as we traverse the stripe. This implies that there is a seam of ferromagnetic bonds between spins on the two different legs of the stripe. The ferromagnetic bonds will cost a lot of energy. However, introducing holes into the stripe will reduce this strain. The ferromagnetic bonds will turn out to be essential to explain the stability of stripes against “hole evaporation”.

In order to understand why a system would want to form such a stripe, we make the theoretical assumption that the system starts out with an antiphase boundary as shown in Fig. 2. Theoretically, one can force such a system by imposing suitable boundary conditions. If the system is $`L`$ sites long, this will entail an energy penalty of, approximately, $`2LJ_z`$. Introducing holes into this system will reduce the energy of this ferromagnetic seam and ameliorate matters.

Topologically, stripes are not literally domain walls in an antiferromagnet (whose spins $`\stackrel{}{S}`$ are continuous variables and not Ising like) but rather topological excitations of the antiferromagnet known as skyrmions. As noted by Wilczek and Zee wilzee  and later incorporated by others in rather novel theories, e.g. Wiegmann paul , skyrmions in an antiferromagnet are cylindrical domains separating Néel states shifted by half a period. We note that topologically, stripes are identical to skyrmions stretched out to form domain walls spanning the entire lattice. Berry phase effects in the antiferromagnet associated with domain wall stripes can give rise to exotic statistics similar to that of skyrmions in 2+1 dimensions- as suggested by extending the results of wilzee  to our domain walls. Subsequent the initial appearance of our work us2002 , further illuminating investigations modeled magnetic order and fluctuations via an analysis of coupled two leg ladders konik .

## V Dynamical Confinement (on-stripe hypothesis)

We now examine what happens if we introduce a hole into the antiferromagnet with a domain wall (see Fig. 3). Once again, our major assumption still is that this hole moves in steps of two such that it will always stay on the same sublattice. We reiterate a note for the experts: our analysis has nothing to do with string states and kink (wiggle) motion beautifully analyzed by many strings ; pryadko , and many of the works in beginn ; a1 ; a2 ; a3 ; a4 ; a5 ; Louis ; a6 ; a7 ; a8 ; a9 ; a10 ; a11 ; a12 ; a13 ; endd  (our point of departure -the sublattice parity principle- is just a way to explicitly avoid high energy string states from the outset). Nor, does our bare analysis have anything to do with the role of the magnetic alleviation energies for a hole drifting into the stripe (whereby it removes bad ferromagnetic bonds) which plays the role of an effective attractive potential. Such effects will only enhance the bare findings that we report here.

With these remarks in mind, we note that if the hole is in the antiferromagnet, far away from the stripe, it has eight positions were it can move to (see Fig. 3). If it is sitting next to the boundary (just outside the stripe), it loses one hop, because of the reversed sublattice structure. The remaining seven hops are all the same as if the boundary was not there.

Larger changes happen with a hole located within the stripe. For such a hole there are only six hops left. In Fig. 3, the hole on the stripe cannot move downward left or downward right because of the change in sublattice structure. So, naively, one might come to the conclusion that a hole has more kinetic energy in the antiferromagnet then if it is on or near the boundary/stripe. Naively, confinement of the hole in the stripe would cost kinetic energy. However, this is not the case.

The reason is that within the antiferromagnet the holes can only move in two steps longitudinally with an amplitude $`t_0`$ or diagonally with an amplitude $`t_2`$ which are of the order of $`J=t^2/Ut`$ (the uniniated reader is referred to Appendix(A) for an exposure to the origin of the exchange coupling $`J`$). On the stripe the hole can stay on the same sublattice by doing a single (instead of double) step up or down with amplitude $`t`$. As a consequence, the hole has a much larger kinetic energy if it is situated on the stripe. Therefore we find that the hole automatically drifts toward the stripe: the amplitude for the ground state wavefunction is maximal for sites on the stripe and decays exponentially the further the sites are away from the strip (see Fig. 4). Holes are driven by an increase in kinetic energy (not exchange energy) to the domain wall. We term this mechanism “dynamical confinement”. The word dynamical is used because it is the motion of the holes on the stripe that lowers the energy. The primary role of kinetic energy in favoring the stripe as a ground state has been discussed many times before, e.g. pryadko ; strings ; erica . Nonetheless, the trivial (yet sizable) lowering of the kinetic energy allowed by hole motion along the ferromagnetic rungs on the domain wall seems to have gone unnoticed.

For the two dimensional problem of a single hole in the vicinity of a full domain wall embedded in a surrounding antiferromagnet (of the variant shown in Fig. (3)), we may work in a very much reduced Hilbert space. In effect, the strongly correlated many particle system reduces to a single particle problem defined on half of the lattice. As there are, ab initio, four possible electronic states on each site (empty, one electron with its spin up, an electron with spin down, and an up and down electronic pair), the Hilbert space of an $`N`$ site system is, trivially, of dimension $`4^N`$. Invoking the sublattice parity principle allows us to reduce the Hilbert space to a mere size of $`N/2`$. The Hubbard Hamiltonian is then reduced to a purely kinetic model, having an amplitude $`t`$ for nearest neighbor direct hops within the stripe, amplitudes $`t_0`$ and $`t_2`$ for longitudinal and diagonal two step hops (as depicted in Fig. 5 for the horizontal motions) within the antiferromagnet and an amplitude $`t_1`$ for two step hopping within the stripe along the axis of the ladder.

Before doing a more detailed analysis, let us first give the reader an intuitive feeling of where we are heading. Looking at Fig. (3), we note that a hole in the bulk disperses with an energy

$`ϵ_{\text{bulk}}`$ $`=`$ $`ϵ_02t_0(\mathrm{cos}2k_x+\mathrm{cos}2k_y)`$ (3)
$`2t_2(\mathrm{cos}(k_x+k_y)+\mathrm{cos}(k_xk_y)).`$
Similarly, along the ladder,

$`ϵ_{\text{stripe}}=ϵ_0\pm t2t_1\mathrm{cos}2k_x,`$ (4)
where the second, $`\pm t`$, contribution denotes the energies of the bonding/antibonding states along the rung. Within this approximation, a sizable finite gap $`\mathrm{\Delta }t`$ separates the minima of both dispersions. In our analysis, it is this $`𝒪(t)`$ gap which is the main driving force for self consistent stripe formation having nothing direct to do with string states and magnetic alleviation energies (which are all of order $`𝒪(J)`$).

In reality, the hole can hop between the stripe and its surrounding bulk: the stripe states may be connected to the bulk. The low lying stripe states are however much lower in energy than their counterparts within the bulk. As a consequence, holes become localized on the stripe. As $`tt^2/U=𝒪(t_0)=𝒪(t_2)`$, the on stripe dispersion is markedly lower in energy than its counterpart for motion within the antiferromagnet. This leads to an exponential decay of the lowest eigenstates states out of the stripe.

We have numerically diagonalized a 12 x 21 system with a direct nearest neighbor hopping amplitude $`t=1`$, effective longitudinal and diagonal next nearest neighbor hopping amplitudes $`t_0=t_2=0.1`$ within the antiferromagnet, and a next nearest neighbor amplitude along the axis of the stripe (ladder) $`t_1=0.1`$. The groundstate wavefunction is, to good numerical accuracy, given by

$`\psi (x,y)|{\displaystyle \frac{t_0}{t}}|^ye^{ik_xx}.`$ (5)
Fig. (4) depicts this wavefunction along the direction perpendicular to the stripe. This figure is similar to Fig. 22 from Chernyshev et. al. strings  who calculated this from a $`11\times 7`$ $`t`$-$`J_z`$ system employing the numerical DMRG method. Our approach leads directly to this exponential confinement due to the dynamical confinement, without the need for complicated numerical calculations.

We will now aim to give the reader an intuitive grip on the physics along with the ability to easily derive rigorous bounds on hole localization within the planar problem.

If we were to allow a hole on the particle to hop to a larger number of neighbors within the bulk (i.e. to artificially enhance kinetic motions and lower confining tendencies), then we may map our system into the dynamics of pseudo-spin 1/2 particles in the presence of a transverse magnetic field. The mapping is as follows: let us mark each point within the bulk by its sublattice parity (up/down) number as depicted in Fig.(3). Let us now tile the plane into vertical 2 $`\times `$ 1 domino blocks lying with their long side parallel to the $`y`$ axis. Each domino within the bulk contains one up and one down site; the labeling of the up and down sites on the dominos lying along the rungs of the ladders may be done arbitrarily. Next, let us envision replacing each domino by a single spin-1/2 particle: the number of the fictitious spin-1/2 particles is equal to half of the number of sites which we now label by $`m`$ and $`n`$. For simplicity we will now assume that all second order hops are of equal magnitude $`\sigma `$. Let us now consider the Hamiltonian

$$H=\sigma \underset{mn,d}{}(c_{md}^{}c_{nd}+c_{nd}^{}c_{md})\underset{nladder}{}\stackrel{}{h}_{ext}\stackrel{}{D}_n,$$
(6)
with the fictitious external magnetic field $`\stackrel{}{h}_{ext}=t\sigma _x\widehat{e}_x`$ oriented along the transverse x-axis, and $`\stackrel{}{D}_n`$ the spin of the psuedo-particle (domino) along the n-th rung of the stripe and $`d`$ is the pseudo-spin polarization label. In the first term $`m`$ and $`n`$ span the entire plane; the sum is performed over all nearest neighbor site $`mn`$ and on four of the eight next nearest neighbor sites (such that all same sublattice hoppings of the holes within the bulk are accounted for). For holes not far from the stripe or on it, the Hamiltonian of Eqn.(6) introduces additional unphysical motions. These allow hoppings of the holes off and on the stripes which are disallowed- such additional terms can only enhance delocalization tendencies. The second term in Eqn.(6) codes for the nearest neighbor up/down hops along the same rung- these alter a pseudo-spin up state to a down state and vice versa. We trivially observe that the low energy dynamics corresponds to the motion of a $`|`$ particle polarized along the applied transverse field sensing an attractive confining potential of strength $`t`$ along the stripe. In physical terms, the psuedospin polarized state $`|=2^{1/2}(|+|)`$ corresponds to the symmetric low energy bonding state (and its counterpart $`|`$ corresponds to the high energy antibonding state). The ground state is simply that of a polarized $`|`$ particle (the symmetric bonding state) sensing a well of infinite extent along one axis and having a finite extent ($`2a`$, with $`a`$ the lattice unit) along the transverse direction. As the problem is translationally invariant along the ladder axis, the longitudinal momentum $`k_x`$ is a good quantum number. The lowest lying wavefunction is translational invariant along the infinite cylindrical axis ($`k_x=0`$) and, at long distances, has the transverse profile of a particle of an effective mass $`m_{eff}=1/(2\sigma )`$ subject to the influence of a potential well of depth $`t`$ and width $`(2a)`$. This trivially leads to an exponentially decaying amplitude in the direction transverse to the stripe. As $`tJ`$, this confining tendency is much more profound (and physical) than most of the common magnetic bond ($`J`$) arguments prevalent in the literature. The reader should bare in mind that our point of departure- the sublattice parity principle is correct only as low energy scales (as compared to $`J`$). Nonetheless, what drives localization in our picture at low energy scale are the much more significant kinetic effects which outshadow the common bad bond ($`J`$) counting arguments.

The solution to this potential well problem is standard. Scaling back by a factor of two to the original (non-domino) coordinates along the $`y`$ axis, we find, asymptotically,

$`\psi (x,y)A\mathrm{exp}[2\alpha |y|];|y|a,`$ (7)
with the lowest lying bound state of Eqn.(6) is obtained by the solution of the transcendental equations

$`[\beta a\mathrm{tan}\beta a=\alpha a]\text{and}[a^2(\alpha ^2+\beta ^2)={\displaystyle \frac{1}{\sigma }}t]`$
$`\text{or}[\beta a\mathrm{cot}\beta a=\alpha a]\text{and}[a^2(\alpha ^2+\beta ^2)={\displaystyle \frac{1}{\sigma }}t]`$ (8)
having the largest value of $`\alpha `$.

Eqn.(7) gives an upper bound on the leakage of the “hole” wavefunction out of the stripe. If we set $`\sigma =`$ max $`\{t_0,t_1,t_2\}`$, we obtain a rigorous upper bound on $`|\psi |`$, at large distances $`|y|`$, consistent with our numerical findings (Eqn.(5)). As the Hamiltonian of Eqn.(6) contains additional unphysical hopping processes from the ladder to its environment, a localized state found for the Hamiltonian of Eqn.(6) implies even more localized states for the more restricted physical problem.

We may similarly address the problem of an arbitrary stripe configuration. In general, adding additional hoppings transforms the problem of the hole motion within and/or near stripes to a kinetic planar problem of a hole coupled by Zeeman couplings to magnetic fields piercing the plane along the stripe trajectories. A multitude of viable self consistent minima of narrow stripes of various geometries are found. Stripe dynamics is akin to the motion of the fields (solenoids) piercing the plane; these, in turn affect hole dynamics by a Zeeman like effect. The evolution of a hole-stripe system may be addressed via such a self consistent scheme.

A related way of immediately deriving lower bounds on the diffusion of the hole out of the stripe amounts to looking at the transverse cross-section of the stripe as depicted in Fig. (5), and examining single hole motions. Solving the Schrodinger equation for this one dimensional system, we immediately obtain a localized bonding state of the lowest energy. As here fewer hops are accounted for than in the original physical problem, the solution serves as a lower bound on “hole” wavefunction leakage out of the stripe. When fused with the previous upper bounds from the pseudo-spin system, we immediately obtain both lower and upper exponential bounds on asymptotic hole propagation out of the stripe.

In this scheme, splintering the sites according to their sublattice numbers (equivalent to the magnetic field sensed by a spin of definite polarization if it is placed at various locations throughout the lattice) introduces hopping parameters for the low energy dynamics with no potential energy in sight. As shown by our analysis, magnetic alleviation effects are not imperative for achieving this dynamical confinement (even when direct magnetic effects are removed we numerically attain exponential localization with little noticeable change). We reiterate that we are examining the reduced Hilbert space where no magnetic string states exist from the outset.

In our approach, we first create an antiferromagnetic spin structure with domain walls and then dope the system. Then, if the spin structure is strong enough, the holes will migrate to the walls and will form a charge structure. Hopefully we have convinced the reader that sublattice parity order can indeed drive stripe formation. The energy scale associated with this discrete sublattice parity ($`Z_2`$) order zohar  can indeed be quite high: the persistence of incommensurate peaks up to at least the high energy resonance peak in YBCO might be interpreted as an indication that the stripe persists as a domain wall up to very high energy scales resonance . Experimentally, charge order is a far greater robust driving force for stripe formation than spin order. The role of sublattice parity (albeit its high energy scales) is not clear at the time of writing. The reader should consider our argument as a self-consistent one in which the creation of the no-hole domain-wall first is a theoretical device that simplifies theoretical discussion. Summarizing, we have seen that once there is a ferromagnetic seam in a very strong antiferromagnet, single holes will automatically move to this seam and be exponentially localized onto them. In the remaining part of this article we will see what the consequences are of this result for more than one hole on the stripe. The localization of the holes is in accord with NQR measurements, e.g., savinkov .

## VI Staggered Ladder systems

We have seen that by dynamical confinement we may consider an antiferromagnetic domain wall as a two-leg ladder with staggered boundary conditions. So, once again we can restrict our Hilbert space. Ladder systems have been extensively studied throughout the years. Hundreds of works on standard (unstaggered) ladder systems have been carried. For a well-known review see Dagotto and Rice DR .

In our case, the influence of the antiferromagnet surrounding the ladder is still there. The surrounding antiferromagnet effectively gives rise to staggered boundary conditions. In the up and coming, we will look at two-leg ladders with staggered fields mimicking the surrounding antiferromagnet. The staggered fields endow the ladder with a sublattice parity structure. Unfortunately, to date, staggered ladders have not been investigated intensively.

Krotov, Lee, and Balatsky KLBafboundary  examined staggered ladders for the Hubbard model at small $`U`$. In this limit, one starts with a non-interacting system and then derives the renormalization group equations. Staggered spin ladders without any holes have been studied by Wang et. al Wang . However, staggered ladder systems with holes in the large $`U`$ limit have not yet been addressed before as far as we know. We will now analyze staggered two leg ladders in a rather pedestrian manner. We verified the perturbative results that we will cite by explicit numerical computations.

## VII The Single electron on an empty staggered ladder

To understand the effect of the boundary conditions on the movement of electrons and holes on the ladder we first examine a single electron on an empty ladder immersed in a staggered magnetic field. This is, of course, a hypothetical situation, but it is nevertheless a good starting point for our discussion. If the electron is on the correct sublattice (i.e. if its spin polarization is opposite to that of the applied staggered magnetic field) then its magnetic energy will be $`ϵ_0=J`$. Being on the wrong sublattice leads to a magnetic energy penalty of $`ϵ_1=+J`$.

This gives rise to staggered potentials on the ladder. The resulting Hamiltonian for the system as shown in Fig. (6), reads

$$H=\left(\begin{array}{cccccccccc}ϵ_1& t& t& & & & & & & \\ t& ϵ_1& 0& t& & & & & & \\ t& 0& ϵ_0& t& t& & & & 0& \\ & t& t& ϵ_0& 0& t& & & & \\ & & t& 0& ϵ_1& t& t& & & \\ & & & t& t& ϵ_1& 0& t& & \\ & & & & t& 0& ϵ_0& t& t& \\ & 0& & & & t& t& ϵ_0& 0& t\\ & & & & & & t& 0& ϵ_1& t\\ & & & & & & & t& t& ϵ_1\end{array}\right).$$
(9)
Here we express the Hamiltonian in terms of ordered real-space basis states where we place the upper and lower sites of each rung adjacent to each other. An electron at any site can always hop to three other sites. Because this is a single particle problem with a translational invariant potential (with unit cell of size two), the eigenfunctions of this Hamiltonian can exactly be determined. They are exactly given by

$$\psi =(B,\pm B,Ae^{ik},\pm Ae^{ik},Be^{2ik},\pm Be^{2ik},Ae^{3ik},\mathrm{}).$$
(10)
Here $`A`$ and $`B`$ are determined by

$`E_k`$ $`=`$ $`ϵ_0\pm t2t{\displaystyle \frac{B}{A}}\mathrm{cos}k`$
$`E_k`$ $`=`$ $`ϵ_1\pm t2t{\displaystyle \frac{A}{B}}\mathrm{cos}k.`$ (11)
The energy can immediately be obtained from

$$\begin{array}{cc}ϵ_0\pm tE_k& 2t\mathrm{cos}k\\ 2t\mathrm{cos}k& ϵ_1\pm tE_k\end{array}=0,$$
(12)
leading to

$`E_k`$ $`=`$ $`\pm t\pm \sqrt{J^2+(2t\mathrm{cos}k)^2}`$ (13)
$`=`$ $`\pm t\pm \sqrt{J^2+2t^2+2t^2\mathrm{cos}2k}.`$
This dispersion illustrates that, due to the staggered boundary conditions, the electron effectively moves in steps of two. Fourier transforming the energy shows that because of the symmetry between $`k`$ and $`\pi k`$, only terms which have an even number of steps from the starting point may have an amplitude unequal to zero: odd, sublattice parity interchanging, hops are banned. In more physical terms, this trivially corresponds to the halving of the period (in $`k`$) in the dispersion $`E_k`$.

Eqn. (13) shows that, for unphysically large $`Jt`$ (a strong influence of the surrounding two-dimensional antiferromagnet), the Hilbert space splits up in four different sectors. First, there is a splitting because of the boundary conditions: half of the sites have the electron on the right sublattice, which leads to a low energy of $`J`$. The other half have the hole on the wrong sublattice, with an energy of $`+J`$. Because the upper and lower leg of the ladder are exactly equivalent, the electron will slosh back and forth between the upper and lower legs. This, in turn, leads to bonding/antibonding linear combinations of the upper and lower sites along each rung, further splintering the Hilbert space into two additional subsectors. The lowest sector, which contains $`N/4`$ basis states, consists of wavefunctions with the electron on the right sublattice (e.g. a spin up polarized electron on the up sublattice) with the symmetric linear combination (bonding) of upper and lower sites.

In the large $`J`$ limit, Eqn. (13) simplifies to

$$E_k=Jt2\frac{t^2}{2J}2\frac{t^2}{2J}\mathrm{cos}2k.$$
(14)
Not surprisingly, we see that this energy corresponds to the electron populating the correct sublattice ($`J)`$ and being smeared along the two rungs in a symmetric bonding fashion ($`t`$). We can easily read off that the effective hopping is in steps of two from the $`\mathrm{cos}2k`$ term. Because we are in the large $`J`$ limit, the hopping amplitude in second order perturbation theory is given by $`\frac{t^2}{2J}`$. We have to hop twice ($`t^2`$) over an intermediate state with energy $`2J`$. The extra contribution $`2\frac{t^2}{2J}`$to the energy comes from virtual excitations where the spin moves one position to the left or right and immediately returns back. There are two possible ways of doing this, and the amplitude again is $`\frac{t^2}{2J}`$. Thus, we can intuitively understand every term in this limit.

There is a gap of $`2t`$ separating the lowest Hubbard band from the antibonding states. Because $`2t`$ is a very large energy scale (approximately 0.5 eV, or 5000 K), we can neglect the influence of the other sectors and may restrict our attention only to the lowest sector.

Our discussion above hinged on the assumption that $`J`$ is very big ($`Jt`$). This assumption is not satisfied in the physically relevant region wherein $`J0.25t`$. In the physically relevant regime, we still have a splitting of the Hilbert space into four sectors (see Fig. (7)). The lowest Hilbert sector is still the same one as the one for the large $`J`$ limit. For small values of $`J`$ compared to $`t`$, the groundstate properties are still dominated by the $`J`$, $`t`$ sector. However, the low lying excitations out of the lowest sector are now to the sector where the electron goes to the wrong sublattice (a single hop) instead of going from a bonding to an antibonding state. Such hops will lead to string states. Nevertheless, as long as the width of the lowest Hubbard band is small compared to $`2J`$ (which itself is also a large energy, of the order of 2400K), we can still think in terms of bonding states on the correct sublattice. Within the lowest Hubbard sector, the electron will only be on the even lattice sites. Effectively, only second order hops are present. Because of the hybridization of up and down sites on a rung, it is sufficient to consider the one dimensional model shown in Fig. (8).

Just as for the single hole in the two dimensional antiferromagnet, discussed in Appendix (A), a lone electron on the empty ladder moves as an effective quasiparticle, with a sublattice hopping amplitude $`\sigma `$.

## VIII One hole on a full Staggered ladder

We now examine one hole in an otherwise full ladder immersed in a staggered external magnetic field. The single spin problem was very simple to solve analytically given our assumptions. The single hole problem is exceedingly more difficult because it is a strongly interacting many body problem. For a system of only $`6\times 2`$ sites, there are already approximately $`800,000`$ states! Systems of this size and larger may be addressed by employing the Lanczos method of diagonalization, which only finds the lowest eigenstates of a matrix. We employed this method for systems of up to size $`8\times 2`$. The complicated results that follow from this numerical study can be understood quite easily for large values of $`J`$. Though not the physically relevant regime, just as in Section (VII), both for $`J>t`$ and $`J<t`$, the ground state is in the same sector of Hilbert space.

For large values of $`J`$, the basic properties are once again those of a single quasiparticle. From the outside, we again assume that the hole cannot leave the stripe. An electron next to the hole can move to the position of the hole, leading to a string-state with one wrong spin. The hole can also move up and down. And it can move in steps of two to the left and right. In addition, we can have spin flips on the ladder. However, just as in the two-dimensional antiferromagnet we neglect the spin-flip processes. For large values of $`J`$ we find once again a number of Hubbard sectors. The lowest sector has N/2 states where the hole is on the right sublattice and an energy of approximately $`2(N1)J`$. Above this lowest Hubbard sector we have the Hubbard sector with a string state of length one. There are 2N states in this sector. The gap between this sector and the lowest sector above it is $`\mathrm{\Delta }=4J4800K`$. We could ingnore this sector if this gap is large with respect to the internal splitting of the lowest Hubbard sector. This bandwidth is given by $`4t^{\prime \prime }`$ with $`t^{\prime \prime }=\frac{t^2}{U+4J}t`$. For $`U8t`$ we have $`t^{\prime \prime }0.1t`$: both $`J`$ and $`t`$ have approximately the same amplitude. However, for the groundstate properties, the relevant properties are those of the lowest a single hole moving in steps of two. The band, shifted down by $`t^2/2J`$ by virtual hopping, has the dispersion of an inverted cosine. The gap $`\mathrm{\Delta }=t`$, separating the on-stripe states from those in the surrounding antiferromagnet, is large with respect to $`t^{\prime \prime }`$. The spins adjust to surrounding antiferromagnetic. In the $`U,J1`$ limit,

$`ϵ_0`$ $`=`$ $`Jt2{\displaystyle \frac{t^2}{2J}},`$
$`\sigma `$ $`=`$ $`2{\displaystyle \frac{t^2}{U+2J}}.`$ (15)
The motion of a single hole on a stripe and its motion in a two dimensional antiferromagnet is identical. The only difference between the parameter sets, is sparked by the presence of the direct hopping term $`t`$ allowed within the topological domain wall. This is in contrast to one dimensional effective theories that assume that the hole effectively becomes a holon on a stripe (see for instance Tchernyshyov and Pryadko pryadko ). Our hole is not a holon in the sense that it will remember if it was injected for a spin up or a spin down electron: they move on diffent sublattices.

We see that we can consider a single hole on a stripe as a quasiparticle, just as a single electron on an empty lattice. They can both be characterized by (different) values for $`ϵ_0`$ and $`\sigma `$. The main difference between a hole on a full ladder and an electron on an empty ladder is that the hole moves more slowly, because it can only move through double occupied intermediate states, which costs a lot of energy. Therefore, $`\sigma `$ is small for a hole, while it is large for an electron on an empty lattice. Our main conclusion is that a single hole and a single electron are effectively identical.

## IX Two electrons on an empty staggered ladder

The equivalence between holes and electrons is no longer true for more than one particle. We will show that the low energy properties for two electrons are different from those of two holes. We first consider the problem of two electrons with opposite spin on an empty ladder. Various possible geometries are sketched in Fig. (11). Because only the relative distance is important, we keep the position of the up spin fixed.

The two electrons can be on the same or opposite legs. Six amplitudes: $`ϵ_0,ϵ_1,ϵ_2,\sigma ,\sigma ^{}`$ and $`\tau `$, defined in Fig. (11), are of relevance. We notice that the hopping amplitude for the electrons when they are far apart ($`\sigma `$) is much larger than the hopping amplitude when they are next to each other ($`\tau `$). If they are far apart, they do not notice each other. Two electrons have less kinetic freedom if they are next to each other. In order to move passed each other, they have to go through a doubly occupied state.

In the $`UJ`$ limit, lowest order perturbation theory yields

$`ϵ_1=ϵ_0`$ $`=`$ $`2J4{\displaystyle \frac{t^2}{2J}},`$
$`ϵ_2`$ $`=`$ $`2J2({\displaystyle \frac{t^2}{2J}}+{\displaystyle \frac{t^2}{2J+U}}),`$
$`\sigma `$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{t^2}{2J}},`$ (16)
$`\tau `$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{t^2}{U+2J}}.`$
The lowest Hubbard sector contains both single electrons and pairs of electrons. However, we have seen that single electrons have a larger kinetic energy than pairs.

Therefore, the ground state consists of electrons that are as far apart as possible. Fig. (12) shows a schematic picture for the density of states. Only at the higher energies of the lowest Hubbard band do we find pairs. The pairs have a small bandwidth because of the small hopping amplitude. Once again we find various sectors as shown in Fig. (12).

## X Two holes in a full staggered ladder

To see the difference between electrons and holes, we now look at two holes in a filled ladder. When far apart, two holes (quasiparticles) do not notice each other. Just as for two electrons on an empty lattice, there are two states in which they strongly influence each other. The main question we wish to address is whether two holes come together and form a real-space pair, or if they tend to be as far apart as possible.

If the two holes are far apart, they will move independently with an amplitude $`\sigma =\frac{t^2}{U+2J}`$ (see Fig. (13)). However, this is different if they are sitting next to each other. In this case no double occupied state is needed. Therefore the hopping amplitude $`\tau =\frac{t^2}{2J}`$, thus $`\tau \sigma `$.

If the two holes are on the same leg, sitting next to each other (see Fig. (14)), than the two holes can move together with a much larger amplitude than if they move alone.

In the left subfigure, a spin up electron moves left. The intermediate state in the middle figure has a higher energy of the order of $`J`$. From this position, the electron with spin up can move back to the starting position, or it can move on to end up as shown in the right figure. Once it is there, the hole-pair has effectively moved one site to the right. This figure only illustrates one possible hopping sequence, there are also other possible ways of hopping. For discussions of pairing one should be careful with fermionic minus signs sparked by the interchange of identical spins once a pair is made to go around trugman ; erica . For the movement of a single hole, there is an intermediate state with an energy of $`U`$. However, if the two holes are next to each other then the intermediate state will not have a doubly occupied site, so therefore this energy is only of the order of $`4J`$. Therefore, $`\sigma ^{}`$ is much large than $`\sigma `$. This leads to the formation of pairs on the stripe.

For large $`U`$ and $`J`$, employing the same convention as before, we find in perturbation theory,

$`ϵ_0`$ $`=`$ $`(N2)J4{\displaystyle \frac{t^2}{2J}}(2N8){\displaystyle \frac{t^2}{U+2J}}`$
$`ϵ_1`$ $`=`$ $`(N2)J4{\displaystyle \frac{t^2}{2J}}(2N8){\displaystyle \frac{t^2}{U+2J}}`$ (18)
$`ϵ_2`$ $`=`$ $`(N2)J2{\displaystyle \frac{t^2}{2J}}(2N6){\displaystyle \frac{t^2}{U+2J}},`$
with $`N=2L`$ the total number of sites on the two leg ladder.

The motion of the pairs on a ladder and the motion of single holes is coupled: both are present in the lowest Hubbard sector. If they form disjoint Hilbert spaces, we will find $`E=ϵ_22\tau \mathrm{cos}k`$ for the real space pair. For two single holes, $`E=ϵ_02\sigma \mathrm{cos}k`$, within perturbation theory. Because $`\sigma `$ is very small, the spectrum for single hole states does not exhibit much dispersion. Taking the energy values from Eqn. (X), the dispersion for two holes on a stripe with staggered potentials is suspected to look like that shown in Fig. (16).

The big difference between holes and electrons is that for two electrons the separated electrons have a large bandwidth and the pairs of electrons are a high energy state with a small dispersion. For holes this is reversed: the pairs have the largest bandwidth, while the separated electrons form a low energy excitation (string states) with a small dispersion.

The lowest state for the pair cosine band is located at $`ϵ_22\tau `$ and the lowest state for the separated holes is located at $`ϵ_02\sigma `$. In perturbation theory, both energies amount to

$`(N2)J4{\displaystyle \frac{y^2}{2J}}(2N8){\displaystyle \frac{t^2}{U+2J}}.`$ (19)
However, here we assumed the pairs and separated holes to be independent. But where they overlap in energy, which in this case is the bottom of the band, the wavefunctions will hybridize.

If we think of a hybridization of up and down sites along the rungs, then no possible interchange can be performed between the holes leading to fermionic minus signs that elevate, rather than depress, the pairing energy erica .

## XI Lanczos calculations

Lowest order perturbation theory for two holes on a staggered ladder leads to the dispersion shown in Fig. (16). The ground state properties cannot be easily determined because of the overlap between separate hole and pair states. To test this situation numerically, we have performed standard Lanczos calculations for the Hubbard model endowed with staggered boundary conditions on a twelve site single chain with staggered boundary conditions. Solving this problem for large two leg ladders is inhibited by the large Hilbert space. The maximum size which we are able to examine numerically is a $`6\times 2`$ system for which there are $`650,000`$ states. Such a system is too small to observe single hole states and pairs accurately. Because of the strong bonding combination between the upper and lower leg of the ladder, the reduction to a one dimensional line is physically justified. The results of the Lanczos calculation show that the ground state has the largest amplitude for pair states with only a small admixture of single hole states. Immediately above the ground state, the excited states are predominantly single hole states. There is a finite energy gap separating the ground state and these excited states. Because of the small lattice size, we cannot determine the value of the energy gap $`\mathrm{\Delta }E`$.

Another approach is to assume that $`ϵ_0,ϵ_2`$, $`\sigma `$, and $`\tau `$ are adjustable parameters. In that case, we can perform a simplified calculation on a $`20\times 2`$ ladder having twenty spin up, and twenty spin down sites. In the aftermath, this leads to a $`400\times 400`$ matrix that can be easily diagonalized. Using this model it is relatively easy to choose the effective parameters such that the cosine band for the pairs has a lower energy than the states where we have single holes far apart. Our numerical results for the Lanczos method suggest that the gap $`\mathrm{\Delta }E`$ separating pair states and single particle states is sufficiently large for the groundstate to consist mostly of pair states.

Nonetheless, as the gap separating the single hole and pair states is small, the pairing physics is, a priori, susceptible to the addition of longer range interactions and hopping interactions. Such effects could easily tip the balance between the single hole and pair states (or enhance pairing tendencies).

## XII Putting all of the pieces together: extended lattice states

We found that if we assume that, somehow, the antiferromagnet has a ferromagnetic domain wall, holes will automatically localize on this topological line. Furthermore, we looked at the movement of a single hole on this staggered ladder and found that it behaves as a single quasiparticle that moves along the ladder in steps of two. Two electrons on an empty lattice try to be as far apart as possible. Two holes on an otherwise half filled ladder, however, form a bound pair. Fusing all of these findings together, and considering not only a single domain wall but rather a larger lattice, we obtain stripe configurations suggested by DMRG calculations WS , mean-field theory, and other treatments. As has long been emphasized, DMRG computations are performed with open boundary conditions. These boundary conditions favor (and, in some cases, may trigger) the formation of stripes and other inhomogeneities. Thus, stripes as seen by DMRG may be argued to be stem from boundary effects. The DMRG results with open boundary conditions have been analyzed via bosonization and other means Ian . Notwithstanding the precise character of the pristine lowest energy states and the importance of boundary effects in DMRG, similar patterns (including other geometries- those of diagonal and horizontal site-centered stripes) are found by numerous other means of analysis, e.g., corboz . Our analysis illustrates that stripes may be stabilized by kinetic constrained. That is not to say that these are the only possible low energy states.

The arguments that we employed in the current work were very pedestrian and general. Throughout we invoked the sublattice parity principle and the related staggering potentials. Our findings are further supported by numerical calculations on the $`t`$-$`J`$ model. We give a very simple physical interpretation for the stripes found by DMRG and other methods.

A hole is on the stripe will delocalize by the hybridization of the upper and lower leg. If we place a hole on the upper leg, the hole will almost immediately jump to the lower leg and vice verse. In numerical calculations, we will therefore find the linear superposition of a hole and the electron depicted in Fig. (18).

White and Scalapino first employed the DMRG technique on the $`t`$-$`J`$ model WS . Fig. (19) shows one of their well known results. We see that the bond centered stripes are very narrow. They look like a ferromagnetic seam in an antiferromagnet. The same result can be obtained in mean-field theory Marcot .

The DMRG calculations of White and Scalapino and those of others since vividly suggested how spin and charge may nestle. Much emphasis was placed on the fact that the holes are on next-nearest neighbor sites. On the opposite diagonal, the spins (which are on the same sublattice) have a very strong antiferromagnetic bonding. In effect, the bound pair is creating a flip in the antiferromagnetic lattice. This might also explain why in the exact calculations and the Monte-Carlo results the binding energy would decrease as a function of the lattice size. Basically, the hole-pair is creating an antiphase boundary, whose energy is increasing as a function of lattice size. That this is indeed a good representation of stripes follows from DMRG calculations by White and Scalapino and other computations.

The reader is urged to focus on the central part of Fig. (19). (Here, the spin and charge texture towards the boundaries are more contorted by the open boundary conditions employed.) We claim that the reason that the mean-field Marcot  and the DMRG calculation are so similar has to do with the fact that the antiferromagnet is very strongly ordered. The stripes are so narrow because of kinetic driven attraction or dynamical confinement. Although we focused on bond-centered stripes, similar considerations rationalize other stripe geometries.

## XIII Longer Range Kinetic and Coulomb Terms

Let us summarize the assumptions that we have invoked, so far, in our analysis:

(i) We assumed, self consistently, the existence of an antiphase domain wall having the geometry of a two leg ladder. Sublattice parity ($`Z_2`$) order was assumed to prevail throughout the entire system.

(ii) Albeit the relatively minute energy difference by which the lowest lying pair states were found to be favored over single hole states, we assumed that the stripe was composed entirely of pairs.

It should be noted (especially in the context of assumption (ii)), that the small energy differences we found separating various contending states (as well as those separating, say, bond centered stripes from site centered stripes) are very susceptible to additional terms in the Hamiltonian.

As we emphasized in the Introduction, the Hubbard model and its $`t`$-$`J`$ cousin are only models. There are myriad very important effects that it does not include which could easily shift the balance between various nearly degenerate contending states.

Coulomb effects (which are much greater importance here than elsewhere given the poor screening in these materials) enhance and stabilize stripe order: a uniform charge density order is strictly forbidden by the divergent Coulomb penalty that it will incur. This point has been emphasized by Emery, Kivelson, and coworkers steve ; low . Fourier transforming the Hamiltonian and looking for the minimizing waveumbers, we are able to see how stripe like charge density modulations will evolve me  once lattice effects are taken into account.

Even if the stripe correlations found by DMRG and other calculations are triggered by the application of open boundary condition effects, when long range Coulomb interactions are introduced, charge stripe order will be further stabilized. Given the natural coupling between spin and charge oron , this will further enhance the sublattice parity flips across the stripe that we assumed from the outset (assumption (i)).

Less emphasized are the role of higher order kinetic terms. These can easily tip the balance: a next nearest neighbor hopping increases pairing significantly. Within the pure $`t`$-$`J`$ model (with a vanishing direct diagonal hopping amplitude $`t^{}=0`$) pairing correlations are infinitesimal and are further frustrated by the $`\pi `$ phase shift across the domain wall. Numerically, $`t^{}`$ which allows holes to move on the same sublattice enhances pairing dramatically. Furthermore, numerically, a negative $`t^{}`$ is seen to favor stripe formation Ogata .

## XIV Conclusion

The principle objective of the current work was to demonstrate that stripe ordering and pairing tendencies in repulsive doped Hubbard type models may result from kinetic considerations. Our analysis indeed illustrated that stripe order self-consistently emerges from the existence of a strong antiferromagnetic background that forces holes to move on the same sublattice. We demonstrated that holes move to antiferromagnetic domain walls and effectively form two-leg ladders. This *dynamical confinement* of holes onto the stripe is caused by the sublattice structure of the antiferromagnet and the increase in kinetic energy on a domain wall. The effective two-leg ladders still feel the influence of the surrounding antiferromagnet in terms of a staggered boundary potential. As shown by Krotov, Lee, and BalatskyKLBafboundary , this increases the tendency to superconductivity. The reason for this is that holes on the stripe form real-space pairs. In principle, our ideas might be tested for other bipartite lattices in which a background Néel order may favor hopping between sites on the same sublattice.

In a related work us2 , we illustrated that these real-space pairs can be mapped to an effective one-dimensional XXZ model in a transverse field. This enables us to discuss the filling fractions of stripes.

###### Acknowledgements.

The authors would like to thank Wim van Saarloos for encouragement and discussions and Jan Zaanen for critical reading of the manuscript and for subsequently pointing out to us pryadko ; strings . We were partially supported by the Foundation of Fundamental Research on Matter (FOM), which is sponsored by the Netherlands Organization of Pure research (NWO). ZN gratefully acknowledges partial support by the NSF under grant no. DMR 1411229.

## Appendix A The sublattice parity principle

The sublattice parity principle amounts to the assumption that a hole in an antiferromagnet is free and can move to all of its next nearest but not to its direct neighbors. This principle is based on and follows from the sublattice structure of antiferromagnetic order. We will provide phenomenological proof for this assumption by examining the dispersion relations obtained by very detailed numerical works.

### A.1 Spin flips

It is well known that the Hubbard model for a half-filled system in the large $`U`$ limit leads to an effective Heisenberg model,

$$H_{\text{Heisenberg}}=\underset{ij}{}\frac{J_{}}{2}(S_i^+S_j^{}+S_i^{}S_j^+)+J_zS_i^zS_j^z,$$
(20)
with $`J_{}=J_z=J`$.

The last (Ising) term of the Heisenberg Hamiltonian wants to make the spins on neighboring lattice sites point in opposite directions. If only this term is present, the groundstate will be a perfect Ising antiferromagnet with long-range (Néel) order: the lattice can be subdivided in an up sublattice and a down sublattice. However, the first (XY) term in the Hamiltonian can undo this order by flipping two neighboring, opposite spins. In principle this term can completely destroy the long range order and indeed it does so in one dimension. In dimensions $`d3`$ clear sublattice order prevails. A large amount of effort in numerical calculations and the very important analysis of the non-linear sigma model by Chakravarty, Halperin and NelsonCHN  have shown that the ground-state of the two-dimensional Heisenberg model (and thus of the undoped Hubbard model) is a long range antiferromagnet for which there exists a two-sublattice structure. The groundstate of the antiferromagnet is not exactly given by the classical Néel state which one would expect from the Ising model. The spin-flip term leads to a finite density of flipped spins (approximately 20%) which give rise to a lowering of the magnetization. It also leads to spin-waves. These spin-waves destroy the long-range antiferromagnetic order at any finite temperature. However, one can define a correlation length and on distances smaller than this length, we can still speak about local antiferromagnetic order. For $`T>0`$, we have local order with a correlation length that decreases with increasing temperature. Therefore, thinking in terms of an Ising model is not completely incorrect as long as one keeps in mind that there is a finite density of flipped spins in the lattice. In the remainder of this article we will neglect these spin flips.

A moment’s reflection reveals that $`[H,S_z^{tot}]=0`$ for the Hubbard model (a property inherited to its descendants), and net magnetization is strictly preserved. Consequently, if Néel order prevails also when a single hole is introduced, hole motion is rigorosly restricted to one sublattice: if a hole could indeed hop to its neighboring site on the opposite sublattice, the magnetic quantum number $`(S_z/\mathrm{})`$ would remain unaltered. On the other hand the two low energy “vacuum” states corresponding to the injection of a hole on the two different sublattices have magnetic quantum numbers $`(S_z/\mathrm{})`$ differing by $`\pm 1`$. These states obviously cannot be connected by any of the magnetization conserving processes of $`H`$. Myriad analytical treatments of the $`t`$-$`J`$ and Hubbard models were aware of this selection rule and have computed transition matrix elements for a single hole between sites of the same sublattice. For one example amongst many see highd .

A well known argument leads to the conclusion that a single hole cannot propagate freely in an antiferromagnet. As shown in Fig. (20), whenever a non backtracking single hole moves from one sublattice to the other, it creates a string of flipped spins in its wake. This leads to a linear confining potential that strongly inhibits hole motion between different sublattices.

This, however, is not the only process that can take place. Fig. (21) shows that it is also possible for a hole to move two steps without creating a confining string potential. This is a second order process in perturbation theory. First we create a second hole two sites away from the first hole. We do this by moving that electron one site closer, next to the first hole. This gives rise to a double occupied intermediate state with a high energy $`U`$. Then, we let the same electron move again, now removing the first hole. The amplitude for the total process is given by $`\sigma =\frac{t^2}{U}`$, much smaller than $`t`$, the first order hopping amplitude. However, the final state has exactly the same energy as the starting state. There are eight sites to which a single hole can hop in this fashion. Note that throughout the entire process, the magnetic quantum number in Fig. (21) is preserved, e.g. $`S_z^{tot}=\mathrm{}/2`$ if perfect Néel order prevails everywhere around the fragment displayed in the figure for a lattice with an even number of sites. Within the t-J and $`tJ_z`$ approximations to the Hubbard model, same sublattice hops are more masked. In the t-J model, only a third order process links a hole to one of its next nearest neighbors on the same sublattice. Albeit holding for models derived from the Hubbard model on bipartite lattices, in many instances the sublattice parity principle becomes much more alive and transparent within the original Hubbard model itself.

### A.2 Numerical dispersions

Simulations of the Hubbard and Heisenberg model with a single hole have found a discrete number of sharp peaks in the spectrum which could be identified with string-states. The longer the string, the higher the energy of the peak. Because there is a gap between the first and second peak, we can confine our attention to the lowest peak. This peak has a finite quasi-particle weight. The dispersion of this peak as a function of $`k`$, tells us about the effective movement of a hole through an antiferromagnet. A numerical result from Louis et. al. Louis  for this dispersion relation in the Hubbard model is shown in Fig. (22).

The central result of numerous investigations is that they all found that a sharp quasiparticle peak appears at the bottom of a broad continuum of the hole spectrum. These quasiparticle poles form a coherent hole band with a width of order of $`2J`$ over a wide range of $`J/t`$, and the coherent propagation is made possible by “healing” a string of flipped spins by quantum fluctuations.

One can easily Fourier transform the numerical low energy hole dispersion relation $`ϵ(\stackrel{}{k})`$ to unveil the important real space quasiparticle motions and their respective amplitudes. If we make the simplifying assumption that the hole is the quasiparticle then we find that essentially all of the low energy weight is distributed amongst the next nearest neighbor motions linking the hole to its sublattice. This is a consistent logical outcome of a strong local Néel order fused with the fact that the magnetic moment is a conserved quantum number. That the nearest states on the same sublattice (and those further away) have the highest weight could hardly be surprising. Hopping amplitudes to sites which are further and further away on the same sublattice drops significantly with distance Louis .

Stated alternatively, if on the two dimensional lattice, the hopping amplitude to any of the four colinear sites (twice (up, down, right or left)) is $`t_0`$ and if motion to any of the four diagonal sites has amplitude $`t_2`$) then the dispersion relation will read

$$ϵ_k=ϵ_04t_2\mathrm{cos}k_x\mathrm{cos}k_y2t_0(\mathrm{cos}2k_x+\mathrm{cos}2k_y).$$
(21)
From lowest order perturbation theory highd , we immediately expect $`t_2=2t_0=𝒪(\frac{t^2}{U})`$ where the relative factor of two originates from the two paths by which we may reach diagonal sites by two consecutive hops as comparde to the single two step route to longintudinal next nearest neighbors. As illustrated in Fig. (23), renormalized hopping amplitudes of the same order of magnitude $`𝒪(\frac{t^2}{U})`$ reproduce the detailed and tedious numerical fits of Fig. (22) remarkably well. More generally, if one Fourier transforms the elaborate data encoded in Fig. (22) we find that the bulk of the Fourier weight corresponds to next to nearest neighbor motions with hopping amplitudes of the same order as anticipated from lowest order perturbation theory Louis .

In accordance with expectations from perturbation theory, it is indeed found numerically that diagonal (nodal) hopping is almost twice as large in amplitude as compared to longitudinal hopping (a property which might easily transcend to larger length scales by virtue of many of the small length scales in these materials) with both amplitudes of order $`𝒪(\frac{t^2}{U})`$. In Fig. (23), we show the theoretical dispersion curves coming from equation (21) for $`t_0=0.70\frac{t^2}{U}`$ and $`t_2=1.52\frac{t^2}{U}`$ and $`ϵ_0=68.15t`$. These curves capture all the essential features of the numerical dispersion curve shown in Fig. (22).

It is obvious that the Brillouin zone has doubled as a result of the fact that the hole is moving in steps of two through the lattice.

The very good fit obtained to the dispersion curve of a single hole in an antiferromagnet by introducing the three parameters ($`ϵ_0`$, $`t_0`$ and $`t_2`$) suggests that the complicated problem of a single hole in an antiferromagnet can be reduced to a single particle problem. This is a major simplification. If we really can neglect spin-flips and string-states, the single hole problem has been reduced to a single-particle problem. The spins have become static and their only function is to create a checkerboard like sublattice structure that keeps the hole moving on only one sublattice by forcing it to move in steps of two. Large $`J`$ means in principle both large $`J_z`$ and $`J_{}`$. A large $`J_{}`$ leads to spin-flips being relatively important and this will restore the string-states. Increasing the value of $`J`$, and thus of $`J_{}`$, leads to spin-flips which will restore a string to the normal antiferromagnet. However, the relevant region of the Hubbard model and the $`t`$-$`J`$ model is the region of small values of $`J`$.

Stated more generally, the constraint on hole motion (equivalent to the assumption of Néel order) may be regarded as a low energy selection rule on the matrix elements of the effective Hamiltonian. The total $`z`$ component of spin (sublattice parity order) is a conserved quantum number and transitions between different sublattice states are banned. Whenever Néel order is strong, the states are effectively separated into two disjoint Hilbert spaces each for a different sublattice parity (magnetic $`S_z`$) quantum number. As we demonstrate in the main text, stripe order may be interpreted as an immediate consequence of sublattice parity quantum numbers.