Numerical Test of the Energy Scale of Columnar Dimerization in High-T_(c) Cuperate Superconductors

Spontaneous bond dimerization (BD) was cojectured to be central to the physics of the cuperate superconductors. Based on ladder models and numerical simulations, we examine the quantitative issue of whether the energy scales involved are sufficient to influence the mechanisms of pairing, stripe formation, pseudo-gap, and quantum critical `normal' state phenomena. We present preliminary evidence that maximum gap scales derived from BD are always too small.