In this second of three articles on the optical absorption of electrons in a halffilled Peierls-distorted chain we present exact results for strongly correlated tight-binding electrons. In the limit of a strong on-site interaction U we map the Hubbard model onto the Harris-Lange model which can be solved exactly in one dimension in terms of spinless fermions for the charge excitations. The exact solution allows for an interpretation of the charge dynamics in terms of parallel Hubbard bands with a free-electron dispersion of band-width W, separated by the Hubbard interaction U. The spin degrees of freedom enter the expressions for the optical absorption only via a momentum dependent but static ground state expectation value. The remaining spin problem can be traced out exactly since the eigenstates of the Harris-Lange model are spindegenerate. This corresponds to the Hubbard model at temperatures large compared to the spin exchange energy.
In this, the second of three articles on the optical absorption of electrons in a half-filled Peierls-distorted chain, we present exact results for strongly correlated tight-binding electrons. In the limit of a strong on-site interaction U, we map the Hubbard model onto the Harris-Lange model which can be solved exactly in one dimension in terms of spinless fermions for the charge excitations. The exact solution allows for an interpretation of the charge dynamics in terms of parallel Hubbard bands with a free-electron dispersion of bandwidth W, separated by the Hubbard interaction U. The spin degrees of freedom enter the expressions for the optical absorption only via a momentum-dependent but static ground-state expectation value. The remaining spin problem can be traced out exactly since the eigenstates of the Harris-Lange model are spin degenerate. This corresponds to the Hubbard model at temperatures large compared with the spin exchange energy. Explicit results are given for the optical absorption in the presence of a lattice distortion δ and a nearest-neighbour interaction V. We find that the optical absorption for V = 0 is dominated by a peak at ω = U and broad but weak absorption bands for |ω - U| ≤ W. For an appreciable nearest-neighbour interaction V < W/2, almost all the spectral weight is transferred to Simpson's exciton band which is eventually Peierls split.
We present a density-matrix embedding theory (DMET) study of the one-dimensional Hubbard-Holstein model, which is paradigmatic for the interplay of electron-electron and electron-phonon interactions. Analyzing the single-particle excitation gap, we find a direct Peierls insulator to Mott insulator phase transition in the adiabatic regime of slow phonons in contrast to a rather large intervening metallic phase in the anti-adiabatic regime of fast phonons. We benchmark the DMET results for both on-site energies and excitation gaps against density-matrix renormalization group (DMRG) results and find good agreement of the resulting phase boundaries. We also compare the full quantum treatment of phonons against the standard Born-Oppenheimer (BO) approximation. The BO approximation gives qualitatively similar results to DMET in the adiabatic regime but fails entirely in the anti-adiabatic regime, where BO predicts a sharp direct transition from Mott to Peierls insulator, whereas DMET correctly shows a large intervening metallic phase. This highlights the importance of quantum fluctuations in the phononic degrees of freedom for metallicity in the one-dimensional Hubbard-Holstein model.
We use the density matrix renormalization group method to investigate the role of gapless, dispersive quantized phonons on the Peierls transition in the extended Hubbard-Peierls model. We calculate the staggered phonon order parameter as a function of the Coulomb interaction and the phonon frequency. For all parameter ranges we show that the staggered phonon order parameter scales as $\sqrt{\ensuremath{\lambda}}$ (and the dimerized bond order scales as $\ensuremath{\lambda}$) as $\ensuremath{\lambda}\ensuremath{\rightarrow}0$ (where $\ensuremath{\lambda}$ is the electron-phonon interaction). We also show that the quantum phonon predictions for the bond order follow the classical (adiabatic) predictions as a function of inverse chain size for small $\ensuremath{\lambda}$. We thus conclude that quantum fluctuations in the nuclear degrees of freedom do not destroy the Peierls state for this model.
The density matrix renormalization group method is used to investigate the Peierls transition for the extended Hubbard model coupled to quantized phonons. Following our earlier work on spin-Peierls systems, we use a phonon spectrum that interpolates between a gapped, dispersionless (Einstein) limit and a gapless, dispersive (Debye) limit to investigate the entire frequency range. A variety of theoretical probes are used to determine the quantum phase transition, including energy gap crossing, a finite-size scaling analysis, and bipartite quantum entanglement. All these probes indicate that a transition of Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless type is observed at a nonzero electron-phonon coupling
gc for a nonvanishing electron-electron interaction. An extrapolation from the Einstein limit to the Debye limit is accompanied by an increase in
gc for a fixed optical ($q=\ensuremath{\pi}$) phonon gap. We therefore conclude that the dimerized ground state is more unstable with respect to Debye phonons, with the introduction of phonon dispersion renormalizing the effective electron-lattice coupling for the Peierls-active mode. By varying the Coulomb interaction
U, we observe a generalized Peierls transition, intermediate between the uncorrelated (
U=0) and spin-Peierls ($U\ensuremath{\rightarrow}\ensuremath{\infty}$) limits, where
U is the Hubbard Coulomb parameter. Using the extended Hubbard model with Debye phonons, we investigate the Peierls transition in trans-polyacetylene and show that the transition is close to the critical regime.
The exact eigenvalues for the ground state and the excitation spectra were obtained for a system with two electrons on two sites, taking into account the transfer energy, the Coulomb repulsion on the same site, and the intersite correlation energy. The vibrational modes couple linearly to the electronic density. We discuss the interplay of these interactions resulting in different phases of distorted and undistorted eigenstates with corresponding localized and delocalized electronic wave functions and accompanying charge transfer. Several simple approximation schemes generalizable to larger systems are evaluated. The comparison with the exact results shows that their validity depends strongly on the system parameters. The according limits of applicability are discussed.