Pairing and Excitation Spectrum in doped t-J Ladders

Exact diagonalization studies for a doped t-J ladder (or double chain) show hole pairing in the ground state. The excitation spectrum separates into a limited number of quasiparticles which carry charge $+|e|$ and spin ${1 \over 2}$ and a triplet mode. At half-filling the former vanish but the latter evolves continuously into the triplet band of the spin liquid. At low doping the quasiparticles form a dilute Fermi gas with a strong attraction but simultaneously the Fermi wavevector, as would be measured in photoemission, is large.