Quantum geometry quantifies how the single-particle Bloch wavefunction changes in phase and amplitude across the Brillouin Zone. In multi-orbital systems where bands have strongly mixed orbital composition, quantum geometry plays a vital role in determining the ground state and low-energy properties of interacting electronic systems. In this work, we show that Mott metal-insulator transitions, as well as transitions between different magnetic orders within the Mott insulating phase, can be driven by the quantum geometry of the underlying Bloch band, thereby providing a mechanism complementary to conventional bandwidth-tuned Mott transitions. By studying the Kane-Mele-Hubbard model using exact diagonalization, we demonstrate that in in half-filled and topologically-trivial bands, quantum geometric properties of the Bloch states alone can act as a tuning knob for Mott metal-to-insulator and affect the competition between ferromagnetism and antiferromagnetism. We show that both transitions may be heuristically understood via non-local Coulomb scattering in a basis of exponentially localized Wannier functions. These results highlight the role of quantum geometry beyond topological settings as a governing principle for conventional Mott and magnetic physics in multi-orbital and moiré materials.
Despite its abundance in nature, predicting the occurrence of ferromagnetism in the ground state is possible only under very limited conditions such as in a flat band system with repulsive interaction or in a band with a single hole under infinitely large Coulomb repulsion, etc. Here, we propose a general condition to achieve saturated ferromagnetism based on the quantum geometry of electronic wave functions in itinerant electron systems. By analyzing the spin excitations of multi-band repulsive Hubbard models with an integer band filling, relevant to either ferromagnetic insulators or semimetals, we show that quantum geometry stabilizes the Goldstone mode in the strongly correlated limit. Our theory indicates the stability of ferromagnetism in a large class of insulators and semimetals other than the previously studied flat band systems and their variants. Moreover, we rigorously prove that saturated ferromagnetism is forbidden in any system with trivial quantum geometry, which includes every half-filled system. We believe that our findings reveal a profound connection between quantum geometry and ferromagnetism, which can be extended to various symmetry-broken ground states in itinerant electronic systems.
We investigate a mechanism to establish ground-state ferromagnetism in flat-band Hubbard systems based on a kind of order-from-disorder effect driven by dispersion. As a paradigm we consider a frustrated diamond chain, where for ideal diamond geometry the lowest one-electron band is flat, but the ground state remains paramagnetic for arbitrary on-site repulsion
U. We focus on half-filling of the flat band. By using numerical and analytical arguments we present the ground-state phase diagram for a distorted diamond chain, i.e., the former flat band becomes dispersive. Driven by the interplay of dispersion and interaction the ground state is ferromagnetic if the interaction exceeds a critical value
Uc.
We investigate the magnetization of the ground state of the one-dimensional flat-band Hubbard model as a function of the electron filling, using exact diagonalization techniques. Our calculation shows that the systems with odd n holes added to half-filling bands for a sufficiently large U (the on-site Coulomb repulsion energy) have a saturated ferromagnetic ground state, which is nondegenerate except for the trivial spin degeneracy. Dependences of the critical value of U on the size and on λ (a parameter of the system) are also investigated. For all values of λ, it is found that the ground state is a saturated ferromagnetic state if U is sufficiently large. Moreover, we find that the critical U for the saturated ferromagnetic ground state is almost independent on the system size, at least, for the system near quarter-filling. These facts indicate that even if the system size go to infinity, the ferromagnetic ground state can be exist for a finite U .
We consider the standard repulsive Hubbard model with a flat lowest-energy band for two one-dimensional lattices (diamond chain and ladder) as well as for a two-dimensional lattice (bilayer) at half filling of the flat band. The considered models do not fall in the class of Mielke-Tasaki flat-band ferromagnets, since they do not obey the connectivity conditions. However, the ground-state ferromagnetism can emerge, if the flat band becomes dispersive. To study this kinetic-energy-driven ferromagnetism we use perturbation theory and exact diagonalization of finite lattices. We find as a typical scenario that small and moderate dispersion may lead to a ferromagnetic ground state for sufficiently large on-site Hubbard repulsion
U>Uc, where
Uc increases monotonically with the acquired bandwidth. However, we also observe for some specific parameter cases, that (i) ferromagnetism appears at already very small
Uc, (ii) ferromagnetism does not show up at all, (iii) the critical on-site repulsion
Uc is a nonmonotonic function of the bandwidth, or that (iv) a critical bandwidth is needed to open the window for ground-state ferromagnetism.
Flat band systems have recently attracted significant attention due to their instability under small perturbations, which can lead to the stabilization of many exotic quantum phases. We study a trimer ladder which shows a middle flat band in the absence of onsite Coulomb interaction. We investigate the quantum phases of the Hubbard model on this geometry using exact diagonalization, density matrix renormalization group, and perturbation theory. We construct a quantum phase diagram in the plane of the next-nearest-neighbor hopping parameter
t2 and onsite Coulomb interaction
U, revealing five distinct quantum phases. At low
U and moderate to high magnitude of
t2, the system exhibits metallic behavior, while at large
U and small magnitude of
t2, it transitions to a ferrimagnetic insulator phase, similar to those observed in certain trimer materials. In the small
t2 limit, the Fermi energy is in the flat band, leading to localization of the electrons within the trimer. At low
U and small magnitude of
t2, the flat band mechanism favors insulating ferrimagnetism, whereas at large
U, ferrimagnetic states emerge from singlet dimer formation between neighboring sites of a trimer and an isolated corner spin, which connect ferromagnetically. The insulating cell spin density wave phase displays an up-up--down-down spin configuration due to competing nearest-neighbor hopping
t1. Interestingly, in moderate
U and
∣t2∣>0.3, the ground state behaves like metallic Tomonaga-Luttinger liquid.