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arXiv:2305.01682 · Physical review. B./Physical review. B

Frustration-induced itinerant ferromagnetism of fermions in optical lattices

Chengshu Li, Ming-Gen He, Chang-Yan Wang, Hui Zhai

Published Apr 16, 2024• 4 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

When the Fermi Hubbard model was first introduced 60 years ago, one of the original motivations was to understand the correlation effects in itinerant ferromagnetism. In the past two decades, ultracold Fermi gas in an optical lattice has been used to study the Fermi Hubbard model. However, the metallic ferromagnetic correlation was observed only in a recent experiment using frustrated lattices, and its underlying mechanism is not yet clear. In this paper, we point out that, under the particle-hole transformation, the single-particle ground state can exhibit double degeneracy in such a frustrated lattice. Therefore, the low-energy state exhibits valley degeneracy, reminiscent of multiorbit physics in ferromagnetic transition metals. The local repulsive interaction leads to the valley Hund's rule, responsible for the observed ferromagnetism. We generalize this mechanism to distorted honeycomb lattices and square lattices with flux. This mechanism was first discussed by M\"uller-Hartmann in a simpler one-dimensional model. However, this mechanism has not been widely discussed and still needs to be related to experimental observations. Hence, our study not only explains the experimental findings but also enriches our understanding of itinerant ferromagnetism.

DOI
10.1103/physrevb.109.165131

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When the Fermi Hubbard model was first introduced 60 years ago, one of the original motivations was to understand the correlation effects in itinerant ferromagnetism. In the past two decades, ultracold Fermi gas in an optical lattice has been used to study the Fermi Hubbard model. However, the metallic ferromagnetic correlation was observed only in a recent experiment using frustrated lattices, and its underlying mechanism is not yet clear. In this paper, we point out that, under the particle-hole transformation, the single-particle ground state can exhibit double degeneracy in such a frustrated lattice. Therefore, the low-energy state exhibits valley degeneracy, reminiscent of multiorbit physics in ferromagnetic transition metals. The local repulsive interaction leads to the valley Hund's rule, responsible for the observed ferromagnetism. We generalize this mechanism to distorted honeycomb lattices and square lattices with flux. This mechanism was first discussed by M"uller-Hartmann in a simpler one-dimensional model. However, this mechanism has not been widely discussed and still needs to be related to experimental observations. Hence, our study not only explains the experimental findings but also enriches our understanding of itinerant ferromagnetism.
A broad class of correlated quantum materials features strong Hund’s coupling, yet cold-atom quantum simulators have so far focused primarily on single-orbital Fermi-Hubbard systems near a Mott insulator. Here, we show that repulsively interacting fermions loaded into the p bands of a hexagonal lattice offer a unique platform to study the interplay of “Hundness” and “Mottness.” Our theory predicts that the orbital degrees of freedom, despite geometric frustration, produce a rich phase diagram featuring a competing itinerant ferromagnetic (FM) metal and a spin-1 antiferromagnetic (AFM) insulator. While FM order is known to emerge at low fillings near the flat-band limit, we show that this itinerant ferromagnetism is remarkably robust, persisting to stronger interactions and higher fillings well beyond the flat-band regime. More importantly, we identify that near half filling, FM is stabilized by a different mechanism: the double exchange with spins aligning to avoid Hund-rule penalties at the expense of the kinetic energy of Dirac fermions. The competition between the kinetic and double-exchange energies leads to, within our approximations, a first-order transition between FM and AFM orders in the chemical potential-interaction strength plane. Our analysis suggests that p -orbital Fermi gases—as multiorbital systems with coexisting localized and itinerant spins—reveal a rich competition between correlated “Hund metals” and other unconventional states driven by quantum fluctuations.
We study itinerant ferromagnetism in multiorbital Hubbard models in certain two-dimensional square and three-dimensional cubic lattices. In the strong coupling limit where doubly occupied orbitals are not allowed, we prove that the fully spin-polarized states are the unique ground states, apart from the trivial spin degeneracies, for a large region of filling factors. Possible applications to ppp-orbital bands with ultracold fermions in optical lattices, and electronic 3d3d3d-orbital bands in transition-metal oxides, are discussed.
The authors investigated the frustration effect when next-nearest-electron hopping causes itinerant ferromagnetism in a one-dimensional Hubbard model.By using the exact diagonalization method and the density-matrix renormalization-group technique,it was shown that the next-nearest electron hopping term stabilizes the ferromagnetic state for a wide range of electron interactions U and electron concentrations n when the system is small.Furthermore,by calculating the local spin-spin correlation function,we found the ferromagnetic state becomes unstable as the length of the system increases.A further study showed that the ferromagnetic relationships of the system become weaker when the system's size increases.In addition,the system will transit to the anti-ferromagnetic correlation when the system reaches critical length.These observed results demonstrate on the one hand that an itinerant ferromagnetic phase exists in the electron-mixing area of small-sized material in the one-dimensional Hubbard model,and on the other hand,these observations should be helpful in understanding the origin of the itinerant ferromagnetism observed recently in some metallic and metallic oxide clusters.
Since its introduction in 1963, the Hubbard model has becomes one of the most popular models used in the literature to study cooperative phenomena in narrow-band metals (ferromagnetism, metal-insulator transitions, charge-density waves, high-Tc superconductivity). Amongst all these cooperative phenomena, the problem of itinerant ferromagnetism in the Hubbard model has the longest history. However, in spite of an impressive research activity in the past, the underlying physics (microscopic mechanisms) that leads to the stabilization of itinerant ferromagnetism in Hubbard model (narrow-band metals) is still far from being understood. In this review we present our numerical results concerning this subject, which have been reached by small cluster exact diagonalization, density matrix renormalization group and quantum Monte Carlo calculations within various extensions of the Hubbard model. Particular attention is paid to a description of crucial mechanisms (interactions) that support the stabilization of the ferromagnetic state, and namely: (i) the long-range hopping, (ii) the correlated hopping, (iii) the long-range Coulomb interaction, (iv) the flat bands and (v) the lattice structure. Most of the presented results have been obtained for the one-dimensional case, but the influence of the increasing dimension of the system on the ferromagnetic state is also intensively discussed.
We propose a scheme to realize the itinerant ferromagnetism of two-component cold fermionic atoms in the ppp-orbital bands in optical lattices. The band flatness in the two-dimensional honeycomb lattice dramatically amplifies the interaction effect, driving the ferromagnetic transition even with a relatively weak repulsive interaction. This scheme has the advantage that the stability of the system can be maintained without causing decay to the molecular state as one approaches the Feshbach resonance from the side with the positive scattering length. Experimental signatures and detections are also discussed.
In the 1930s, two main paradigms for the theoretical description of ferromagnetism were developed: Heisenberg ferromagnetism of localized fermions (e.g., in a lattice), and Bloch or Stoner ferromagnetism of nonlocalized fermions (i.e., in a gas), also called itinerant ferromagnetism. Despite many theoretical predictions, itinerant ferromagnetism has remained elusive in experiments. This ferromagnetic state is predicted to occur for strong repulsive interactions, corresponding to a regime that is very challenging to describe theoretically because there are multiple competing physical effects, including superfluid pairing. In this paper, we point out that the problem of itinerant ferromagnetism for atomic Fermi gases is different from that of electron gases in metals due to the short-range nature of the interatomic interactions. We also show that the standard saddle point used to describe itinerant ferromagnetism of the electron gas in metals does not apply, because in the short-range limit of this approximation the Pauli exclusion principle is violated. As a remedy, we introduce a modified interaction pseudopotential for ultracold gases which includes both local (Hartree) and nonlocal (Fock) terms while preserving the Pauli exclusion principle in the short-range regime. Furthermore, we demonstrate the usefulness of this method to study the existence and stability of itinerant ferromagnetism in ultracold atomic gases. Lastly, we obtain the critical temperature for the ferromagnetic transition as a function of the opposite-spin interaction strength and find a rather good agreement with recent experimental results.