New microscopic paradigms in the doped Fermi-Hubbard model

The interplay of mobile dopants with anti-ferromagnetic spin correlations is at the heart of high-temperature superconductivity. Here we present a microscopic trial wavefunction describing individual dopants as spinon-chargon composites. We derive the correlations of the charges with their spin environment and reveal short-range hidden string order, which manifests in genuine higher-order correlations developing around the dopants and can be directly observed in state-of-the-art quantum simulations. Our microscopic model explains the observations of string patters and the dressing cloud of magnetic polarons in recent measurements performed with ultracold atoms in optical lattices. Our approach can be applied at finite doping and paves the way for a microscopic description of the exotic metallic phases in strongly correlated cuprate compounds.