Microsopic theory of spin polarons in Chern ferromagnets

We develop a microscopic theory of charged excitations in an SU(2) Chern ferromagnet and obtain closed-form wavefunctions for a hierarchy of charge-$e$ spin polaron states binding an arbitrary number of spin flips. In an ideal Chern-$1$ band with a normal-ordered contact interaction, we show that these polarons are exact eigenstates of the Hamiltonian with the same energy as single-hole excitations. Away from this ideal limit, we promote these states to a variational family by introducing a single size parameter and a geometry-informed single-particle dressing. Our momentum-space wavefunctions admit two equivalent representations: a ratio of Jastrow factors of Weierstrass functions of relative momenta or an antisymmetrized geminal product of particle-hole wavefunctions. The latter enables efficient evaluation of overlaps and expectation values for large system sizes and many spin flips. Benchmarking in the lowest Landau level, the single-spin-flip ansatz achieves $\gtrsim 99\%$ overlap with exact diagonalization and accurately captures binding energies, while the multi-spin-flip energies interpolate smoothly toward the large-texture (skyrmion) regime. For Chern bands with tunable quantum geometry, we find that interaction-generated single particle dispersion quickly destabilizes the spin polarons once quantum geometry becomes sufficiently non-uniform. When such dispersion is suppressed, however, the bound states persist deeper into the non-uniform regime, with the binding energy slowly decreasing and the bound state becoming larger as the quantum geometry becomes more concentrated. Our results provide a microscopic foundation for analyzing doped Chern ferromagnets in moiré platforms and lay the groundwork for variational wavefunctions of multi-polaron excitations and phases.

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Publication Details

Journal
Physical Review Letters
Published
2026-11-03
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1103/8mtx-9bv4
Primary Topic
Topological Materials and Phenomena
Type
article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
0.00

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article

Microsopic theory of spin polarons in Chern ferromagnets

Qiang Gao, Eslam Khalaf
Physical Review Letters
Topological Materials and Phenomena
article

Microsopic theory of spin polarons in Chern ferromagnets

Qiang Gao, Eslam Khalaf
article en

Abstract

We develop a microscopic theory of charged excitations in an SU(2) Chern ferromagnet and obtain closed-form wavefunctions for a hierarchy of charge-$e$ spin polaron states binding an arbitrary number of spin flips. In an ideal Chern-$1$ band with a normal-ordered contact interaction, we show that these polarons are exact eigenstates of the Hamiltonian with the same energy as single-hole excitations. Away from this ideal limit, we promote these states to a variational family by introducing a single size parameter and a geometry-informed single-particle dressing. Our momentum-space wavefunctions admit two equivalent representations: a ratio of Jastrow factors of Weierstrass functions of relative momenta or an antisymmetrized geminal product of particle-hole wavefunctions. The latter enables efficient evaluation of overlaps and expectation values for large system sizes and many spin flips. Benchmarking in the lowest Landau level, the single-spin-flip ansatz achieves $\gtrsim 99\%$ overlap with exact diagonalization and accurately captures binding energies, while the multi-spin-flip energies interpolate smoothly toward the large-texture (skyrmion) regime. For Chern bands with tunable quantum geometry, we find that interaction-generated single particle dispersion quickly destabilizes the spin polarons once quantum geometry becomes sufficiently non-uniform. When such dispersion is suppressed, however, the bound states persist deeper into the non-uniform regime, with the binding energy slowly decreasing and the bound state becoming larger as the quantum geometry becomes more concentrated. Our results provide a microscopic foundation for analyzing doped Chern ferromagnets in moiré platforms and lay the groundwork for variational wavefunctions of multi-polaron excitations and phases.

Physical Review Letters
National Science Foundation, Harvard University, Division of Materials Research, FAS Division of Science, Harvard University
Openalex Percentile: Top 72%
Topological Materials and Phenomena
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