An extension of the renormalization group method that includes the effect of retardation for the interactions of a fermion gas is used to reexamine the quantum and classical properties of Peierls-type states in one dimension. For models of spinless and spin-
21 fermions interacting with either intra- or intermolecular phonons, the quantum corrections to the Peierls gap at half-filling are determined at arbitrary phonon frequency. The nature of quantum-classical transitions is clarified in weak coupling.
We study the nature of the ground state of the Su-Schrieffer-Heeger model for electron-phonon interactions in one dimension in the half-filled-band case. We consider the cases of spinless electrons (
n=1) and spin-\textonehalf{} electrons (
n=2), and discuss the stability of the Peierls-dimerized ground state as a function of the ionic mass and electron-phonon coupling constant. We first consider the zero-mass limit of the theory and extend our results to finite mass using renormalization-group arguments. For spinless electrons, it is found that quantum fluctuations destroy the long-range dimerization order for the small electron-phonon coupling constant if the ionic mass is finite. For spin-\textonehalf{} electrons, the system is dimerized for an arbitrary coupling constant and phonon frequency. Renormalization-group trajectories show that the low-energy behavior of the system is governed by the zero-mass limit of the theory, an
n-component Gross-Neveu model. Monte Carlo simulations are performed for the model at finite phonon frequencies, and the results are compared with the static limit result. We study in particular the set of parameters appropriate for polyacetylene and find a 15% reduction in the phonon order parameter due to fluctuations of the phonon field. A finite-size scaling analysis of the numerical data for the cases
n=1and2 is performed, which confirms the results obtained from the renormalization-group analysis.
Asymptotic properties of nearly half-filled one-dimensional conductors coupled with phonons are studied through a renormalization-group method. Due to spin-charge coupling via an electron-phonon interaction, the spin correlation varies with filling as well as the charge correlation. Depending on the relation between cutoff energy scales of the umklapp process and of the electron-phonon interaction, various phases appear. We find a metallic phase with a spin gap and a dominant charge-density-wave correlation near half filling between a gapless density-wave phase (like in the doped repulsive Hubbard model) and a superconductor phase with a spin gap. The spin gap is produced by phonon-assisted backward scatterings that interfere with the umklapp process constructively or destructively depending on the character of electron-phonon coupling. \textcopyright{} 1996 The American Physical Society.