Using the Lanczos method for exact diagonalization on systems up to 14 sites, combined with a novel phase randomization'' technique for extracting more information from these small systems, we investigate several aspects of the one-dimensional Peierls-Hubbard Hamiltonian, in the context of trans-polyacetylene: the dependence of the ground state dimerization on the strength of the electron-electron interactions, including the effects of off-diagonal'' Coulomb terms generally ignored in the Hubbard model; the phonon vibrational frequencies and dispersion relations, and the optical absorption properties, including the spectrum of absorptions as a function of photon energy. These three different observables provide considerable insight into the effects of electron-electron interactions on the properties of real materials and thus into the nature of strongly correlated electron systems. 29 refs., 11 figs.
We apply the Hubbard-Peierls Hamiltonian to study the low-lying excited states of several model conjugated polymers. The calculations employ a numerical renormalization-group method for chains of intermediate length, and a more approximate truncated configuration-interaction scheme to extrapolate the results to longer systems. In the range of on-site Coulomb repulsion strengths of physical interest, we find that a correlated even-parity singlet excited state competes with the odd-parity singlet excitation expected in the U=0 limit of the model, in agreement with previous studies on the Pariser-Parr-Pople model. The lowest electronic excitations in the model are identified as triplet excitations. Self-consistently-relaxed lattice configurations surrounding these electronic excitations are studied. In addition to the stable photoexcitations predicted in the U=0 limit of the theory, we find that the interelectronic repulsive potential leads to a rich spectrum of competing neutral structures, which are studied and characterized. Coulomb correlations provide a mechanism for production of long-lived spin-1/2 neutral excitations for degenerate ground-state systems, and spin-1 neutral excitations for nondegenerate ground-state systems.
The dimerization of polyacetylene is studied using a distance-dependent Hubbard Hamiltonian for the valence $\ensuremath{\pi}$ electrons and approximating $\ensuremath{\sigma}$-electron contributions by a sum of pair interactions ${E}_{\ensuremath{\sigma}}{(r}_{\mathrm{ij}})$. The $\ensuremath{\pi}$-electron Coulomb repulsion
U is taken to be independent of the C-C distances
rij and is varied systematically from the uncorrelated or H\"uckel limit all over to the strongly correlated or Heisenberg regime. For each value of
U, ${E}_{\ensuremath{\sigma}}{(r}_{\mathrm{ij}})$, and the $\ensuremath{\pi}$-electron hopping integral
t(rij) are fitted to reproduce ab initio results on the ground-state and first-excited-state energy of the ethylene molecule. The one-dimensional many-body problem is solved numerically by means of the density-matrix renormalization-group (DMRG) method. The ground-state energy
E of the infinite open polymer is obtained by extrapolation considering chains of up to 300 atoms. The dimerization $\ensuremath{\delta}{=(r}_{i,i+1}\ensuremath{-}{r}_{i\ensuremath{-}1,i})/2$ and the average bond length ${R=(r}_{i,i+1}{+r}_{i\ensuremath{-}1,i})/2$ are determined by minimizing
E. While
R is not significantly affected by the value of
U, $\ensuremath{\delta}$ shows a remarkable nonmonotonic behavior. The differences between the delocalized regime, small
U/t, and spin-Peierls behavior, large
U/t, are discussed. The convergence properties of the DMRG algorithm are analyzed as a function of
U, $\ensuremath{\delta}$, and the number states kept at each RG step. Criteria are examined in order to control the accuracy of the DMRG calculations in both weakly and strongly correlated situations.
To the conventional Peierls-Hubbard model, involving both on-site (U) and nearest-neighbor (V) Coulomb repulsions, we add ``off-diagonal'' terms, not expressible purely in terms of site densities, representing bond-bond (W) and mixed bond-site (X) electron-electron repulsive interactions involving nearest neighbors. We review earlier analyses of these interactions and discuss relative magnitudes of the parameters in applications to real materials. As a specific illustration, we investigate the effects of the off-diagonal W and X terms on dimerization in the one-dimensional, half-filled-band Peierls-Hubbard models, which have been widely applied to conjugated polymers (such as trans-polyacetylene) and to related quasi-one-dimensional charge-density wave (CDW) systems. Using both weak- and strong-coupling perturbation theory for large systems and exact diagonalizations of small systems, we investigate thoroughly the nature of the ground state of the model. For a broad range of the site-diagonal Hubbard parameters (U,V), including the values believed to be relevant to trans-polyacetylene, we find that the off-diagonal terms (W,X) initially enhance dimerization, thereby stabilizing the dimerized [or bond-order-wave (BOW)] ground state. For (unphysically) large values of W relative to U and V, dimerization is destroyed, and the BOW ground state goes over to a ferromagnetic ground state or a CDW ground state, depending on the relative sizes of U, V, and W. We conclude with a general discussion of the applicability of the Peierls-Hubbard models to quasi-one-dimensional materials, including the potential importance of the breaking of charge conjugation (``particle-hole'') symmetry by the X term.
In this work the optical excitations in the one-dimensional extended Peierls-Hubbard model are studied. There are two competing interactions in this model, namely the Coulomb interaction and the Peierls interaction. The latter causes a dimerised lattice structure. To calculate the optical excitations perturbatively, one needs to identify the dominant interaction of the model. In the field-theoretical limit using different methods, such as a semiclassical approach, mean-field theory and the renormalisation group, one finds that it is the Peierls-interaction which dominates the system and therefore defines the starting point for perturbation theory. Rayleigh-Schrödinger perturbation theory is carried out up to second order in the weak Coulomb interaction for the ground-state energy and the one-particle gap. The singlet and triplet exciton gaps, i.e. charge and spin gap, are calculated using Wannier perturbation theory, two-step perturbation theory and Downfolding perturbation theory. All results are compared to results obtained by using the density-matrix renormalisation group approach (DMRG).
For the one-dimensional, extended Peierls–Hubbard model we calculate analytically the ground-state energy and the single-particle gap to second order in the Coulomb interaction for a given lattice dimerization. The comparison with numerically exact data from the density-matrix renormalization group shows that the ground-state energy is quantitatively reliable for Coulomb parameters as large as the bandwidth. The single-particle gap can almost triple from its bare Peierls value before substantial deviations appear. For the calculation of the dominant optical excitations, we follow two approaches. In Wannier theory, we perturb the Wannier exciton states to second order. In two-step perturbation theory, similar in spirit to the GW -BSE approach (where the Bethe–Salpeter equation is solved for quasi-particles which are calculated in the GW -approximation), we form excitons from dressed electron–hole excitations. We find the Wannier approach to be superior to the two-step perturbation theory. For singlet excitons, Wannier theory is applicable up to Coulomb parameters as large as half the bandwidth. For triplet excitons, second-order perturbation theory quickly fails completely.