High-Spin Polaron in Lightly Doped CuO2 Planes

We derive and investigate numerically a minimal yet detailed spin-polaron model that describes lightly doped CuO2 layers. The low-energy physics of a hole is studied by total-spin-resolved exact diagonalization on clusters of up to 32 CuO2 unit cells, revealing features missed by previous studies. In particular, spin-polaron states with total spin 3/2 are the lowest eigenstates in some regions of the Brillouin zone. In these regions, and also at other points, the quasiparticle weight is identically zero indicating orthogonal states to those represented in the one electron Green's function. This highlights the importance of the proper treatment of spin fluctuations in the many-body background.