Based on three general guiding principles, i.e., no double occupancy constraint, accurate description of antiferromagnetism at half-filling, and the precise sign structure of the t-J model, a new ground state wave function has been constructed recently [Weng, New J. Phys. 13, 103039 (2011)]. In this paper, we specifically study such kind of variational ground state for the one-hole-doped anisotropic two-leg t-J ladder using variational Monte Carlo (VMC) method. The results are then systematically compared with those recently obtained by density matrix renormalization group (DMRG) simulation. An excellent agreement is found between the VMC and DMRG results, including a "quantum critical point" at the anisotropy parameter α = α_c ≈ 0.7 (with the parameters t/J=3), and the emergence of charge modulation and momentum (Fermi point) reconstruction at α > α_c due to the quantum interference of the sign structure. In particular, the wave function indicates that a Landau's quasiparticle description remains valid at α < α_c but fails at α > α_c due to the breakdown of the one-to-one correspondence of momentum and translational symmetry of the hole. The explicit form of the wave function provides a direct understanding on how the many-body strong correlation effect takes place non-perturbatively in a doped Mott insulator, which sheds interesting light on the two-dimensional case where the same type of wave function was proposed to describe the cuprate superconductor.

Injecting a single hole into a one-dimensional Heisenberg spin chain is probably the simplest case of doping a Mott insulator. The motion of such a single hole will generally induce a many-body phase shift, which can be identified by an exact sign structure of the model known as the phase string. We show that the sign structure is nontrivial even in this simplest problem, which is responsible for the essential properties of Mott physics. We find that the characteristic momentum structure, the Luttinger liquid behavior, and the quantum phase interference of the hole under a periodic boundary condition, can all be attributed to it. We use the density matrix renormalization group (DMRG) numerical simulation to make a comparative study of the t-J chain and a model in which the sign structure is switched off. We further show that the key DMRG results can be reproduced by a variational wave function with incorporating the correct sign structure. Physical implications of the sign structure for doped Mott insulators in general are also discussed.

We study a ground-state ansatz for the single-hole doped t-J model in two dimensions via a variational Monte Carlo (VMC) method. Such a single-hole wave function possesses finite angular momenta generated by hidden spin currents, which give rise to a novel ground state degeneracy in agreement with recent exact diagonalization (ED) and density matrix renormalization group (DMGR) results. We further show that the wave function can be decomposed into a quasiparticle component and an incoherent momentum distribution in excellent agreement with the DMRG results up to an 8×8 lattice. Such a two-component structure indicates the breakdown of Landau's one-to-one correspondence principle, and in particular, the quasiparticle spectral weight vanishes by a power law in the large sample-size limit. By contrast, turning off the phase string induced by the hole hopping in the so-called σ⋅t-J model, a conventional Bloch-wave wave function with a finite quasiparticle spectral weight can be recovered, also in agreement with the ED and DMRG results. The present study shows that a singular effect already takes place in the single-hole-doped Mott insulator, by which the bare hole is turned into a non-Landau quasiparticle with translational symmetry breaking. Generalizations to pairing and finite doping are briefly discussed.

We propose a general construction of commuting projector lattice models for 2D and 3D topological phases enriched by U(1) symmetry, with finite-dimensional Hilbert space per site. The construction starts from a commuting projector model of the topological phase and decorates U(1) charges to the state space in a consistent manner. We show that all 2D U(1) symmetry-enriched topological phases which allow gapped boundary without breaking symmetry, can be realized through our construction. We also construct a large class of 3D topological phases with U(1) symmetry fractionalized on particles or loop excitations.

The classification and construction of symmetry-protected topological (SPT) phases in interacting boson and fermion systems have become a fascinating theoretical direction in recent years. It has been shown that (generalized) group cohomology theory or cobordism theory gives rise to a complete classification of SPT phases in interacting boson or spin systems. The construction and classification of SPT phases in interacting fermion systems are much more complicated, especially in three dimensions. In this work, we revisit this problem based on an equivalence class of fermionic symmetric local unitary transformations. We construct very general fixed-point SPT wave functions for interacting fermion systems. We naturally reproduce the partial classifications given by special group supercohomology theory, and we show that with an additional \tilde{B}H^2(G_b,\mathbb{Z}_2) structure [the so-called obstruction-free subgroup of H^2(G_b,\mathbb{Z}_2)], a complete classification of SPT phases for three-dimensional interacting fermion systems with a total symmetry group G_f = G_b × \mathbb{Z}^f_2 can be obtained for unitary symmetry group G_b. We also discuss the procedure for deriving a general group supercohomology theory in arbitrary dimensions.