Self-trapping and Binding of Particles from Singular Pockets in Weakly Doped AFM Mott Insulator

We consider effects of binding and self-trapping of particles added or excited over the insulating state of an antiferromagnetic Mott insulator. The state of an electron or a hole (as appears in ARPES), or of their bound pair (as appears in optics) can be modified by interactions with collective degrees of freedom—deformations of the lattice or of the spin environment. The resulting self-localized state lowers the total particle energy, enhances its effective mass and splits off the electronic level below the nominal insulating gap. We show theoretically that the effect is particularly pronounced for states near the antinodal (π, 0) type point of the Brillouin zone of the CuO₂ because of proximity to the van Hove singularity. We study also the van Hove enhancements for bound states of the electron with neutral and charged impurities and for inter-gap excitons. The results are clearly important for undoped and electron-doped cuprates where the antinodal points correspond to the spectrum bottom for electrons. The effect is indirectly important for lightly hole-doped cuprates concerning the ARPES spectrum transfer between the nodal arcs and the dark antinodal regions.