We investigate the effect of hole doping on the strong-coupling Hubbard model at half filling in spatial dimensions D≥1. We start with an antiferromagnetic mean-field description of the insulating state, and show that doping creates solitons in the antiferromagnetic background. In one dimension, the soliton is topological, spinless, and decoupled from the background antiferromagnetic fluctuations at low energies. In two dimensions and above, the soliton is nontopological, has spin quantum number 1/2, and is strongly coupled to the antiferromagnetic fluctuations. We derive the effective action governing the quasiparticle motion, study the properties of a single carrier, and comment on a possible description at finite concentration. © 1996 The American Physical Society.

• Received 12 December 1995

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.54.7737