Ground-state properties of the doped three-leg t-J ladder

Results for a doped three-leg t-J ladder obtained using the density-matrix renormalization group are reported. At low hole doping, the holes form a dilute gas with a uniform density. The momentum occupation of the odd band shows a sharp decrease at a large value of k(F) similar to the behavior of a lightly doped t-J chain, while the even modes appear gapped. The spin-spin correlations decay as a power law consistent with the absence of a spin gap, but the pair-field correlations are negligible. At larger doping we find evidence for a spin gap and as x increases further we find three-hole diagonal domain walls. in this regime there are significant pair-field correlations and the internal pair orbital has d(x2-y2)-like symmetry.