We study low-dimensional quantum systems with analytical and computational methods. Firstly, the one-dimensional extended $t$-$V$ model of fermions with interactions of a finite range is investigated. The model exhibits a phase transition between liquid and insulating regimes. We use various analytical approaches to generalise previous theoretical studies. We devise a strong coupling expansion to go beyond first-order perturbation theory. The method is insensitive to the presence or the lack of integrability of the system. We extract the ground state energy and critical parameters of the model near the Mott insulating commensurate density. We also study the possible charge-density-wave phases that exist when the model is at the critical density. Secondly, we investigate Mott-Wannier complexes of two (excitons), three (trions) and four (biexcitons) charge carriers in two-dimensional semiconductors. Our study also includes impurity-bound complexes. We provide a classification of trions and biexcitons in transition-metal dichalcogenides, which incorporates the difference of spin polarisation between molybdenum- and tungsten-based materials. Using the diffusion Monte Carlo method, which is statistically exact for these systems, we extract binding energies of the complexes for a complete set of parameters of the model. Our results are compared with theoretical and experimental work on transition-metal dichalcogenides. An agreement is found for excitonic and trionic results, but we also observe a large discrepancy in the theoretical biexcitonic binding energies as compared to the experimental values. Possible reasons for this are outlined. We also calculate contact pair densities, which in the future can be used in the determination of the contact interaction.
We study low-dimensional quantum systems with analytical and computational methods. Firstly, the one-dimensional extended t-V model of fermions with interactions of a finite range is investigated. The model exhibits a phase transition between liquid and insulating regimes. We use various analytical approaches to generalise previous theoretical studies. We devise a strong coupling expansion to go beyond first-order perturbation theory. The method is insensitive to the presence or the lack of integrability of the system. We extract the ground state energy and critical parameters of the model near the Mott insulating commensurate density. We also study the possible charge-density-wave phases that exist when the model is at the critical density. Secondly, we investigate Mott-Wannier complexes of two (excitons), three (trions) and four (biexcitons) charge carriers in two-dimensional semiconductors. Our study also includes impurity-bound complexes. We provide a classification of trions and biexcitons in transition-metal dichalcogenides, which incorporates the difference of spin polarisation between molybdenum- and tungsten-based materials. Using the diffusion Monte Carlo method, which is statistically exact for these systems, we extract binding energies of the complexes for a complete set of parameters of the model. Our results are compared with theoretical and experimental work on transition-metal dichalcogenides. An agreement is found for excitonic and trionic results, but we also observe a large discrepancy in the theoretical biexcitonic binding energies as compared to the experimental values. Possible reasons for this are outlined. We also calculate contact pair densities, which in the future can be used in the determination of the contact interaction.
Since the advent of high-Tc cuprate superconductors in 1986, strongly correlated electron systems have attracted much attention. Since the cuprates are essentially two-dimensional, low-dimensional systems have moved into the focus of condensed-matter theory. From a theoretical point of view, one-dimensional systems are of particular interest because there are exact numerical and analytical methods which permit detailed studies and deep insights into the many-body problem. In the first part of this thesis, using the numerically exact methods Exact Diagonalization and the Density-Matrix Renormalization Group (DMRG), we investigate the properties of the Tomonaga–Luttinger liquid which is the generic metallic state of matter in one dimension. In particular, we concentrate on the investigation of the so-called Tomonaga–Luttinger liquid parameter which determines the critical exponent α for the density of states near the Fermi energy. Experimental results for some quasi one-dimensional materials report α≳1, which would imply Kρ≲0.17, a value which cannot be reconciled with the bare Hubbard model where KρH≥0.5, i.e., αH≲1/8. We develop new accurate numerical methods to obtain Kρ and investigate how to obtain such small values for Kρ for slightly doped charge-density-wave insulators. In the second part of this thesis, using the Thermodynamic Bethe Ansatz (TBA) as exact analytical method, we investigate the one-dimensional Hubbard model in the spindisordered regime, which is characterized by the temperature being much larger than the magnetic energy scale but small compared to the Mott–Hubbard gap. Our study is motivated by the controversy about the Mott–Hubbard insulator in infinite dimensions whose ground state is also spin-disordered. In this system the determination of the precise value of the critical interaction strength Uc where the Mott–Hubbard gap closes is still unsolved. Therefore, we provide an example of a Hubbard-type model with a disordered spin background which can be solved exactly. The thermodynamics of our model can be understood in terms of gapped charged excitations with an effective dispersion which are decoupled form the spin degrees of freedom; the latter contribute only entropically. An interpretation of this regime in terms of a putative interacting-electron system at zero temperature leads to a metal-insulator transition at a finite interaction strength above which the gap opens linearly. Our exact results indicate that the strong-coupling expansion of the ground-state energy cannot be used to locate Uc. However, the strong-coupling expansion of the gap permits a reliable extrapolation of the critical interaction strength.
We investigate three different types of quantum phase transition occurring in quasi one-dimensional systems theoretically and numerically. First, we study the band-insulator to Mott-insulator transition occurring in charge-transfer complexes, for which the half-filled one-dimensional ionic Hubbard model is considered to be the prototype model. The study is carried out by first deriving an effective spin-one model, and then studying the model numerically using the density matrix renormalization group. We perform a careful finite-size scaling analysis of the mass gaps, order-parameters, and relative susceptibility. We confirm the existence of two quantum critical points. Analysis of the critical exponents confirms that the band-insulator-to-spontaneously-dimerized phase transition belong to the 2D Ising class. The spontaneously dimerized phase undergoes a phase transition to the Mott-insulator which is an infinite-order. Second, we investigate the Mott metal-insulator transition for the half-filled Hubbard model with both nearest-neighbor t and next-nearest-neighbor t′ hopping terms. We study the model using the bosonization approach and density matrix renormalization group simulations. An effective low-energy Hamiltonian that describes the insulator-metal transition is derived. We present results of density matrix renormalization group calculations of spin and charge distribution in various sectors of the phase diagram. The numerical results support the picture derived from the effective theory and give evidence for the complete separation of the transitions involving the spin and the charge degrees of freedom. Finally, we investigate quantum phase transitions phases in low-dimensional fermionic and spin models that go from uniform to spatially inhomogeneous, i.e., dimerized, trimerized, or incommensurate, phases. We propose a new approach based on studying the length dependence of the von Neumann entropy and its corresponding Fourier spectrum for finite segments in the ground state of finite chains. Peaks at a nonzero wave vector are indicators of oscillatory behavior in decaying correlation functions and also provide significant information about certain relevant features of the excitation spectrum; in particular, they can identify the wave vector of soft modes in critical models.
This dissertation discussed four low-dimensional systems: Hubbard ladder and its 2D extension, anisotropic Hubbard ladder, one-dimensional two-orbital t-J model, and Kondo model. All of them are of strongly correlated. Doped cuprates, as strongly correlated systems, have attracted a lot of attention in the condensed matter physics community, not just from the purely theoretical perspective, but also due to the novel applications beyond the conventional semiconductor paradigm. They display complicated phase diagram, defying the conventional rigid band theory, shaking our common sense and driving us to wrestle with many-body physics. With the aid of advanced experimental techniques such as ARPES, its various exotic electronic structure, such as waterfalls, hole pockets, Fermi arcs and kinks have been unveiled and remain open to interpretation. To attack such complicated problems, people usually build various models to mimic the CuO2 planes, which is the common feature of various cuprate compounds and is believed to be mainly responsible for their complicated properties, especially the high temperature superconductivity. In Chapter 3, we simulated the spectral properties of the 2- leg single-band Hubbard ladder and its 2-dimensional extension at and away from half-lling using the numerical tool: the combination of Cluster Perturbation Theory (CPT) with the time-dependent density matrix renormalization group method (tDMRG) as a solver. The main features of the spectrum can be described with a mean-eld dispersion, with kinks and pseudogap traced back to scattering between spin and charge degrees of freedom. As a bonus, we nd that the spectrum of hubbard ladder involves spin-polaron, the bound state of spinon and holon. Interacting one-dimensional electron systems generically behave dierent from higher dimensional systems in the sense that its low-energy excitations are described by Luttinger liquid theory as collective bosonic modes carrying spin and charge separately, the so-called spinons and holons, rather than the coherent quasi-particles in Fermi liquid theory. This phenomenon is known as spin-charge separation, an intrinsic property of 1D system. It can be thought of as a particular case of electron fractionalization. When multiple 1D chains get coupled, how the picture changes? In Chapter 4, we study the spectral function of the anisotropic 2-leg Hubbard ladder, one of the simplest multiple-chain systems. The spectrum can be understood as the scattering resultants of spinon and holons: As the inter-chain hopping is increased, the continuum in the bonding channel moves to higher energies and spinon and holon branches merge into a single coherent quasi-particle band. Simultaneously, the spectrum undergoes a crossover from a regime with two minima at incommensurate values of kx (a Mott insulator), to one with a single minimum at kx = (a band insulator). In addition, the spectrum contains a continuum of scattering states consisting of a triplon and a polaron, accompanied by the formation of bound states with higher spin 3 2 , ferromagnetic \spin bags" in which the hole can move freely. To analyze the formation of quasi-particle, we study the time-evolution of charge and spin degrees of freedom in real space after a hole is injected, which indicates that incoherent holons and spinons can emerge into polarons, that can propagate coherently, after a characterstic time . Multiorbital systems can involve Mott and Hund physics, and are rich in various phenomena, including orbital selective Mott transitions, spin-orbital separations, and pairing density wave due to the complex interplay between spin, charge and orbital degrees of freedom. Therefore, it can capture many unique features in real strongly correlated systems, such as iron pnictides and ruthenates, and thus attract a lot of investigations. In Chapter 5, we comprehensively study a one-dimensional two-orbital model at and below quarter lling, which realizes a number of unconventional phases, by means of DMRG and some analytical calculations. In particular, we nd that the system supports an extensive density wave in which excitons quasicondense with nite center-of-mass momentum. In this phase, excitons behave as hardcore bosons without charge order. In addition, excitons can pair to form biexcitons in a state that is close to a charge density wave instability. Finally, a genuine orbital-selective paired state (metallic plus spin-gapped superconductor) can be realized when pairing dominates over the interorbital repulsion. Kondo problem, as one of the most studied and best understood correlated systems, has been studied by various techniques, but the internal structure of its ground state has two deeply con icting pictures: At strong coupling limit, the system is essentially composed of a scattering center, which is a tightly bound singlet formed by the impurity and a localized electron at r0, and the remaining conduction electrons that are decoupled to the impurity and remain almost \free". At weak enough couplings, the singlet extends to the entire volume and the impurity will couple mostly to one electron at the Fermi level. In chapter 6, we provide a coherent picture to unveil the puzzle in the context of quantum information theory by deconstructing the Kondo singlet, both in real and energy space, and measuring the spin correlations between the impurity and the invididual free electron eigenstate based on two dierent measures. As a bonus, we can identify \projected natural orbitals" that can be used as a \good" approximate wavefunctions for simulations, and a quasi-order parameter that determines the crossover from weak to strong coupling regimes and furthermore oers the means to measure the Kondo screening length K. This screening length might be used to characterize the \size" of the Kondo cloud.
Experiments on strongly correlated quasi-two-dimensional electronic materials---for example, the high-temperature cuprate superconductors and the putative quantum spin liquids kappa-(BEDT-TTF)2Cu2(CN)3 and EtMe3Sb[Pd(dmit)2]2---routinely reveal highly mysterious quantum behavior which cannot be explained in terms of weakly interacting degrees of freedom. Theoretical progress thus requires the introduction of completely new concepts and machinery beyond the traditional framework of the band theory of solids and its interacting counterpart, Landau's Fermi liquid theory. In full two dimensions, controlled and reliable analytical approaches to such problems are severely lacking, as are numerical simulations of even the simplest of model Hamiltonians due to the infamous fermionic sign problem.Here, we attempt to circumvent some of these difficulties by studying analogous problems in quasi-one dimension. In this lower dimensional setting, theoretical and numerical tractability are on much stronger footing due to the methods of bosonization and the density matrix renormalization group, respectively. Using these techniques, we attack two problems: (1) the Mott transition between a Fermi liquid metal and a quantum spin liquid as potentially directly relevant to the organic compounds kappa-(BEDT-TTF)2Cu2(CN)3 and EtMe3Sb[Pd(dmit)2]2 and (2) non-Fermi liquid metals as strongly motivated by the strange metal phase observed in the cuprates. In both cases, we are able to realize highly exotic quantum phases as ground states of reasonable microscopic models. This lends strong credence to respective underlying slave-particle descriptions of the low-energy physics, which are inherently strongly interacting and also unconventional in comparison to weakly interacting alternatives.Finally, working in two dimensions directly, we propose a new slave-particle theory which explains in a universal way many of the intriguing experimental results of the triangular lattice organic spin liquid candidates kappa-(BEDT-TTF)2Cu2(CN)3 and EtMe3Sb[Pd(dmit)2]2. With use of large-scale variational Monte Carlo calculations, we show that this new state has very competitive trial energy in an effective spin model thought to describe the essential features of the real materials.
The Holstein model of spinless fermions interacting with dispersionless phonons in one dimension is studied by a Green's function Monte Carlo technique. The ground-state energy, first fermionic excited state, density wave correlations, and mean lattice displacements are calculated for lattices of up to 16 sites, for one fermion per two sites, i.e., a half-filled band. Results are obtained for values of the fermion hopping parameter of t=0.1\ensuremath{\omega}, \ensuremath{\omega}, and 10\ensuremath{\omega}, where \ensuremath{\omega} is the phonon frequency. At a finite fermion-phonon coupling g there is a transition from a metallic phase to an insulating phase in which there is charge-density-wave order. Finite-size scaling is found to hold in the metallic phase and is used to extract the coupling dependence of the Luttinger liquid parameters, ${\mathit{u}}_{\mathrm{\ensuremath{\rho}}}$ and ${\mathit{K}}_{\mathrm{\ensuremath{\rho}}}$, the velocity of charge excitations, and the correlation exponent, respectively. For free fermions (g=0) and for strong coupling (g2\ensuremath{\gg}t\ensuremath{\omega}) our results agree well with known analytic results. \textcopyright{} 1996 The American Physical Society.
The Hubbard model is a simple but profound theoretical tool for understanding the physics underlying strongly correlated systems. This phenomenology includes, but is not limited to, metal-insulating transitions, charge and spin order (charge density/spin density waves), superconducting phases, non-Fermi liquid physics, among others. Examining one dimensional physical models described by the Hubbard Hamiltonian can teach us much about the related physics of higher dimensional systems. Applying advanced numerical computational techniques such as density matrix numerical renormalization group (DMRG) to one-dimensional manypbody model Hamiltonians allows for the calculation of ground state energies and dynamical spectral functions with extremely high precision and accuracy. This thesis explores the application of DMRG numerical techniques to one-dimensional physical systems described by Hamiltonians beyond the conventional Hubbard model, and the nuanced physical effects observed for these systems across various regimes and phases. A Wannier Hubbard chain composed of non-orthogonal overlapping atomic orbitals was transformed to an orthogonal atomic basis using a non-unitary Lowdin transformation. The calculation of energies, dynamical spectral functions and the photoemission spectrum for this Wannier Hubbard chain revealed phases not previously observed for Hubbard chains at half-filling. Additional analysis and calculations were performed for a CuO chain described by the Luther-Emery Hamiltonian that epitomizes charge-transfer physics. The motivation for studying this CuO chain was previous literature on transition metal oxides (TMOs) and the mapping of multiband Hamiltonians to single band models in certain energy regimes. Finally, we performed computational analysis for a spin-3/2 generalized Hubbard chain. By spanning the full phase space of our spin-3/2 Hubbard chain in terms of chemical potential μ and external magnetic field h we observed non-typical Cooper pairing states and novel phases for different symmetries of our Hamiltonian.--Author's abstract