Abstract
We study the effects of phonons in N-leg Hubbard ladders within the framework of a one-loop renormalization group. In particular, we explicitly demonstrate that the role of phonons changes qualitatively even in the simplest two-leg ladder, as compared-to the single-chain system where phonons always dominate. Our numerical results suggest that in the spin-gapped phase of the two-leg ladder, the opening of the spin gap by electron-electron interaction also drives the electron-phonon interaction to strong coupling, but in a subdominant fashion. Therefore, even though the inclusion of phonons does not alter the phase, their subdominant relevance strongly renormalizes some physical properties below the energy scale of the spin gap. This might shine some light on recent experiments showing an anomalous isotope effect in high-temperature superconductors. © 2005 The American Physical Society.