The existence of conserved spin Hall currents is shown in a strongly correlated system without involving spin-orbit coupling. The spin Hall conductivity is determined by intrinsic bulk properties, which remains finite even when the charge resistivity diverges in strong magnetic fields at zero temperature. The state in the latter limit corresponds to a spin Hall insulator. Such a system is a doped Mott insulator described by the phase string theory, and the spin Hall e ect is predicted to coexist with the Nernst e ect to characterize the intrinsic properties of the low-temperature pseudogap phase.

In this paper, it is shown how a single stripe and a stripe phase grow from individual holes in the low-doping regime. In an effective low-energy description of the t-J model, i.e., the phase-string model, a hole doped into the spin-ordered phase will induce a dipolar distortion in the background Kou and Weng, Phys. Rev. B 67, 115103 2003. We analyze the hole-dipole configurations with lowest energy under a dipole-dipole interaction and show that these holes tend to arrange themselves into a regular polygon. Such a stable polygon configuration will turn into a stripe as the number of hole dipoles becomes thermodynamically large and eventually a uniform stripe state can be formed, which constitutes an energetically competitive phase at low doping. We also briefly discuss the effect of Zn impurities on individual hole dipoles and stripes.

We show that a topological gauge structure in an e ective description of the t-J model gives rise to a global phase diagram of antiferromagnetic (AF) and superconducting (SC) phases in a weakly doped regime. Dual confinement and deconfinement of holons and spinons play essential roles here, with a quantum critical point at a doping concentration xc≃0.043. The complex experimental phase diagram at low doping is well described within such a framework.