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arXiv:1808.02925 · Physical review. B./Physical review. B

Thermal and quantum lattice fluctuations in Peierls chains

Manuel Weber, Fakher F. Assaad, Martin Hohenadler

Published Dec 7, 2018• 8 citations
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Abstract

Thermodynamic and spectral properties of electrons coupled to quantum phonons are studied in the framework of the one-dimensional spinless Holstein model. Using quantum Monte Carlo simulations and an efficient exact estimator for the specific heat based on the properties of the perturbation expansion we calculate the specific heat and compressibility for the entire range of electron-phonon couplings and phonon frequencies. Our results reveal how the Peierls gap and long-range order at zero temperature as well as the significant renormalization of electrons and phonons---revealed by the corresponding spectral functions---manifest themselves in the specific heat. We also quantitatively assess the validity for the widely used classical phonon approximation and identify the electronic contribution predicted for a Tomonaga-Luttinger liquid.

DOI
10.1103/physrevb.98.235117

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Thermodynamic and spectral properties of electrons coupled to quantum phonons are studied in the framework of the one-dimensional spinless Holstein model. Using quantum Monte Carlo simulations and an efficient exact estimator for the specific heat based on the properties of the perturbation expansion we calculate the specific heat and compressibility for the entire range of electron-phonon couplings and phonon frequencies. Our results reveal how the Peierls gap and long-range order at zero temperature as well as the significant renormalization of electrons and phonons---revealed by the corresponding spectral functions---manifest themselves in the specific heat. We also quantitatively assess the validity for the widely used classical phonon approximation and identify the electronic contribution predicted for a Tomonaga-Luttinger liquid.
We present exact numerical results for the effects of thermal fluctuations on the experimentally relevant thermodynamic and spectral properties of Peierls chains. To this end, a combination of classical Monte Carlo sampling and exact diagonalization is used to study adiabatic half-filled Holstein and Su-Schrieffer-Heeger models. The classical nature of the lattice displacements in combination with parallel tempering permit simulations on large system sizes and a direct calculation of spectral functions in the frequency domain. Most notably, the long-range order and the associated Peierls gap give rise to a distinct low-temperature peak in the specific heat. The closing of the gap and suppression of order by thermal fluctuations involves in-gap excitations in the form of soliton-antisoliton pairs and is also reflected in the dynamic density and bond structure factors as well as in the optical conductivity. We compare our data to the widely used mean-field approximation and highlight relations to symmetry-protected topological phases and disorder problems.
Summary: The interplay of charge, spin and lattice degrees of freedom is studied for quasi-one-dimensional electron and spin systems coupled to quantum phonons. Special emphasis is put on the influence of the lattice dynamics on the Peierls transition. Using exact diagonalization techniques the ground-state and spectral properties of the Holstein model of spinless fermions and of a frustrated Heisenberg model with magneto-elastic coupling are analyzed on finite chains. In the non-adiabatic regime a (T = 0) quantum phase transition from a gapless Luttinger-liquid/spin-fluid state to a gapped dimerized phase occurs at a nonzero critical value of the electron/spin-phonon interaction. To study the nature of the spin-Peierls transition at finite temperatures for the infinite system, an alternative Green’s function approach is applied to the magnetostrictive XY model. With increasing phonon frequency the structure factor shows a remarkable crossover from soft-mode to central-peak behaviour. The results are discussed in relation to recent experiments on CuGeO3. 1
The quantum phase transition between a repulsive Luttinger liquid and an insulating Peierls state is studied in the framework of the one-dimensional spinless Holstein model. We focus on the adiabatic regime but include the full quantum dynamics of the phonons. Using continuous-time quantum Monte Carlo simulations, we track, in particular, the dynamic charge structure factor and the single-particle spectrum across the transition. With increasing electron-phonon coupling, the dynamic charge structure factor reveals the emergence of a charge gap and a clear signature of phonon softening at the zone boundary. The single-particle spectral function evolves continuously across the transition. Hybridization of the charge and phonon modes of the Luttinger liquid description leads to two modes, one of which corresponds to the coherent polaron band. This band acquires a gap upon entering the Peierls phase, whereas the other mode constitutes the incoherent, high-energy spectrum with backfolded shadow bands. Coherent polaronic motion is a direct consequence of quantum lattice fluctuations. In the strong-coupling regime, the spectrum is described by the static, mean-field limit. Importantly, whereas finite electron density in general leads to screening of polaron effects, the latter reappear at half-filling due to charge ordering and lattice dimerization.
The effects of quantum lattice fluctuations on the Peierls transition and the optical conductivity in the one-dimensional Holstein model of spinless fermions have been studied by developing an analytical approach based on the unitary transformation method. We show that when the electron-phonon coupling constant decreases to a finite critical value, the Peierls dimerization is destroyed by the quantum lattice fluctuations. The dimerization gap is much more reduced by the quantum lattice fluctuations than the phonon order parameter. The calculated optical conductivity does not have the inverse-square-root singularity, but it has a peak above the gap edge, and there exists a significant tail below the peak. The peak of optical-conductivity spectrum is not directly corresponding to the dimerized gap. Our results of the phase diagram and the spectral-weight function agree with those of the density-matrix renormalization group and the exact diagonalization methods.
We study the one-dimensional Holstein model with spin-12\frac{1}{2}21​ electrons at half filling. Ground-state properties are calculated for long chains with great accuracy using the density-matrix renormalization-group method and extrapolated to the thermodynamic limit. We show that for small electron-phonon coupling or large phonon frequency, the insulating Peierls ground state predicted by mean-field theory is destroyed by quantum lattice fluctuations and that the system remains in a metallic phase with a nondegenerate ground state and power-law electronic and phononic correlations. When the electron-phonon coupling becomes large or the phonon frequency small, the system undergoes a transition to an insulating Peierls phase with a twofold degenerate ground state, long-range charge-density-wave order, a dimerized lattice structure, and a gap in the electronic excitation spectrum.
We use a recently developed extension of the weak-coupling diagrammatic determinantal quantum Monte Carlo method to investigate the spin, charge, and single-particle spectral functions of the one-dimensional quarter filled Holstein model with phonon frequency ${\ensuremath{\omega}}_{0}=0.1t$. As a function of the dimensionless electron-phonon coupling we observe a transition from a Luttinger to a Luther-Emery liquid with dominant 2kf2{k}_{f}2kf​ charge fluctuations. Emphasis is placed on the temperature dependence of the single-particle spectral function. At high temperatures and in both phases it is well accounted for within a self-consistent Born approximation. In the low-temperature Luttinger liquid phase we observe features that compare favorably with a bosonization approach retaining only forward scattering. In the Luther-Emery phase, the spectral function at low temperatures shows a quasiparticle gap that matches half the spin gap, whereas at temperatures above which this quasiparticle gap closes characteristic features of the Luttinger liquid model are apparent. Our results are based on lattice simulations on chains up to L=20L=20L=20 for two-particle properties and on cluster dynamical mean-field theory calculations with clusters up to 12 sites for the single-particle spectral function.