Effects of non-magnetic impurities on transport and spectral properties of a hole-doped Mott insulator

We study the nature of electronic states induced by the non-magnetic impurities in a hole-doped Mott insulator. We further examine the consequences of doping on the transport and spectral properties. By employing exact diagonalizaton + Monte-Carlo simulation based on the many-body computational techniques, which allows for the thermal and spatial fluctuations besides a fine resolution in the momentum-space spectral function, the current investigation unravels the degree of localization of the electronic states induced by the impurity atoms as a function of temperature. The major consequences of doping impurity, which introduces holes in the systems, include the appearance of impurity states just above the Fermi level and only in the vicinity of momenta where the gap opens along the normal state Fermi surface in the insulating state. The electronic state at the impurity site is split because of the antiferromagnetic background. The pseudogap-like behavior of the density of states is weakened as reflected by the enhanced charge fluctuations even away from the impurity site at an elevated temperature. Our study also reflects on the degree of improvement in conductivity as well as particle-hole asymmetry introduced in the momentum-resolved spectral function, which maximizes towards the high-symmetry points like ([Formula: see text].