Excitons and dark fermions as origins of mott gap, pseudogap and superconductivity in cuprate superconductors —General concept and basic formalism based on gap physics

Theory of doped Mott insulators is revisited in the light of recent understanding on the singular self-energy structure of the single-particle Green’s function. The unique pole structure in the self-energy induces the high-temperature superconductivity in the anomalous part, while it generates Mott gap and pseudogap in the normal part. Here, we elucidate that fractionalization of electrons, which is exactly hold in the Mott insulator in the atomic limit, more generally produces the emergent Mott-gap fermion and dark (hidden) fermions. It does not require any spontaneous symmetry breaking. The two gaps are the consequences of the hybridization of these two fermions with quasiparticles. We further propose that the Mott-gap fermion and dark fermions are the fermionic component of Frenkel- and Wannier-type excitons, respectively, which coexist in the doped Mott insulator. The Bose–Einstein condensation of the Frenkel-type excitons allowed without spontaneous symmetry breaking holds a key for understanding the unique pole structure and the pseudogap through the instantaneous hybridization between the fractionalized quasiparticle and the dark fermion in analogy with the Mott gap. We argue that the high-T_c superconductivity is ascribed to the dipole attraction of the Wannier-type excitons. The gap formation mechanism is compared with that caused by conventional spontaneous symmetry breaking known over condensed matter and elementary particle physics including quantum chromodynamics. We propose a numerical framework to test this idea and concept, and discuss experimental ways to find evidences.