Paper detail

Imaging the Holon String by Quantum Interference

It has been a long sought goal of Quantum Simulation to find answers to long standing questions in condensed matter physics. A famous example is the ground and the excitations of 2D Hubbard model with strong repulsion below half filling. The system is a doped antiferromagnet. It is of great interests because of its possible relation to high Tc superconductor. Theoretically, the fermion excitations of this model are believed to split up into holons and spinions, and a moving holon is believed to leave behind it a string of "wrong" spins that mismatch with the antiferromagnet background. Here, we show that the properties of the ground state wavefunction and the holon excitation of the 2D Hubbard model can be revealed in unprecedented detail using the technique of quantum interference in atomic physics. This is achieved by using quantum interference to measure the Marshall sign of the doped antiferromanget. The region of wrong Marshall sign directly reflects the spatial extent of fluctuating string attached to the holon.