Strongly correlated electron systems are one of the most fascinating problems in current physics. The strong electron-electron interaction in these materials leads to the emergence of nontrivial elementary excitations (quasiparticles, QPs) above the ground state ranging from fractional spins in quasi-one-dimensional materials to magnetic monopole in the pyrochlore lattice. The condensation of these quasiparticles upon changing some external parameters may stabilize new exotic states of matter. Experimental measurements such as inelastic neutron scattering provide us with valuable information about the excitation spectrum of such systems which require microscopic models to be described. This thesis is devoted to a detailed analysis of the excitation spectrum and of the quantum phase transitions in the one-dimensional (1D) ionic Hubbard model (IHM). The IHM consists of a nearest-neighbor (n.n.) hopping, onsite Hubbard interaction, and an ionic (staggered) potential separating the odd and even sites energetically. The model exhibits two continuous phase transitions on increasing the Hubbard interaction identified by a low-energy effective field theory and confirmed by a rigorous density matrix renormalization group (DMRG) analysis after several attempts. The first transition occurs from band insulator (BI) phase to the 2-fold degenerate spontaneously dimerized insulator (SDI) phase. The transition is in the Ising universality class as is plausible from symmetry considerations. The SDI phase becomes unstable towards a quasi-long-range order Mott insulator (MI) phase at a second transition point resembling the Kosterlitz-Thouless (KT) transition in the frustrated Heisenberg chain. We employ continuous unitary transformations (CUT) to systematically map the IHM to effective Hamiltonians (almost) conserving the number of QPs in the system. Using an analysis in the BI regime where electrons and holes define QPs, the low-energy excitation spectrum of the model is quantitatively determined in the BI phase almost up to the first transition point. The transition from the BI to the SDI phase is signaled by the vanishing of an S=0 exciton mode at the total momentum K=\pi. The condensation of these excitons beyond the first transition point is described by a BCS-type-theory showing the stabilization of the SDI phase. The mean-field solution indicates no second phase transition to the quasi-long-range order MI phase. This is interpreted as the effect of strong quantum fluctuations in one dimension. We consider the IHM in the dimer limit where the uniform chain is separated into independent dimers. The different phases of the IHM are studied by increasing the interdimer hopping and reaching the uniform limit. This dimer limit satisfactorily produces the excitation spectrum of the BI phase confirming the vanishing of an S=0 exciton mode at the first transition point. It is found that the SDI-to-MI transition takes place by softening of a magnetic S=1 excitation, i.e., a triplon. We report rigorous results for the gapless triplon dispersion in the MI phase and discuss the binding effects in the 2-triplon sector.
Strongly correlated electron systems are one of the most fascinating problems in current physics. The strong electron-electron interaction in these materials leads to the emergence of nontrivial elementary excitations (quasiparticles, QPs) above the ground state ranging from fractional spins in quasi-one-dimensional materials to magnetic monopole in the pyrochlore lattice. The condensation of these quasiparticles upon changing some external parameters may stabilize new exotic states of matter. Experimental measurements such as inelastic neutron scattering provide us with valuable information about the excitation spectrum of such systems which require microscopic models to be described. This thesis is devoted to a detailed analysis of the excitation spectrum and of the quantum phase transitions in the one-dimensional (1D) ionic Hubbard model (IHM). The IHM consists of a nearest-neighbor (n.n.) hopping, onsite Hubbard interaction, and an ionic (staggered) potential separating the odd and even sites energetically. The model exhibits two continuous phase transitions on increasing the Hubbard interaction identified by a low-energy effective field theory and confirmed by a rigorous density matrix renormalization group (DMRG) analysis after several attempts. The first transition occurs from band insulator (BI) phase to the 2-fold degenerate spontaneously dimerized insulator (SDI) phase. The transition is in the Ising universality class as is plausible from symmetry considerations. The SDI phase becomes unstable towards a quasi-long-range order Mott insulator (MI) phase at a second transition point resembling the Kosterlitz-Thouless (KT) transition in the frustrated Heisenberg chain. We employ continuous unitary transformations (CUT) to systematically map the IHM to effective Hamiltonians (almost) conserving the number of QPs in the system. Using an analysis in the BI regime where electrons and holes define QPs, the low-energy excitation spectrum of the model is quantitatively determined in the BI phase almost up to the first transition point. The transition from the BI to the SDI phase is signaled by the vanishing of an S=0 exciton mode at the total momentum K=\pi. The condensation of these excitons beyond the first transition point is described by a BCS-type-theory showing the stabilization of the SDI phase. The mean-field solution indicates no second phase transition to the quasi-long-range order MI phase. This is interpreted as the effect of strong quantum fluctuations in one dimension. We consider the IHM in the dimer limit where the uniform chain is separated into independent dimers. The different phases of the IHM are studied by increasing the interdimer hopping and reaching the uniform limit. This dimer limit satisfactorily produces the excitation spectrum of the BI phase confirming the vanishing of an S=0 exciton mode at the first transition point. It is found that the SDI-to-MI transition takes place by softening of a magnetic S=1 excitation, i.e., a triplon. We report rigorous results for the gapless triplon dispersion in the MI phase and discuss the binding effects in the 2-triplon sector.
A detailed study of the one-dimensional ionic Hubbard model with interaction U is presented. We focus on the band insulating (BI) phase and the spontaneously dimerized insulating (SDI) phase which appears on increasing U. By a recently introduced continuous unitary transformation [H. Krull et al., Phys. Rev. B 86, 125113 (2012)] we are able to describe the system even close to the phase transition from BI to SDI although the bare perturbative series diverges before the transition is reached. First, the dispersion of single fermionic quasiparticles is determined in the full Brillouin zone. Second, we describe the binding phenomena between two fermionic quasiparticles leading to an S=0 and to an S=1 exciton. The latter corresponds to the lowest spin excitation and defines the spin gap which remains finite through the transition from BI to SDI. The former becomes soft at the transition, indicating that the SDI corresponds to a condensate of these S=0 excitons. This view is confirmed by a BCS mean-field theory for the SDI phase.
We investigate three different types of quantum phase transition occurring in quasi one-dimensional systems theoretically and numerically. First, we study the band-insulator to Mott-insulator transition occurring in charge-transfer complexes, for which the half-filled one-dimensional ionic Hubbard model is considered to be the prototype model. The study is carried out by first deriving an effective spin-one model, and then studying the model numerically using the density matrix renormalization group. We perform a careful finite-size scaling analysis of the mass gaps, order-parameters, and relative susceptibility. We confirm the existence of two quantum critical points. Analysis of the critical exponents confirms that the band-insulator-to-spontaneously-dimerized phase transition belong to the 2D Ising class. The spontaneously dimerized phase undergoes a phase transition to the Mott-insulator which is an infinite-order. Second, we investigate the Mott metal-insulator transition for the half-filled Hubbard model with both nearest-neighbor t and next-nearest-neighbor t′ hopping terms. We study the model using the bosonization approach and density matrix renormalization group simulations. An effective low-energy Hamiltonian that describes the insulator-metal transition is derived. We present results of density matrix renormalization group calculations of spin and charge distribution in various sectors of the phase diagram. The numerical results support the picture derived from the effective theory and give evidence for the complete separation of the transitions involving the spin and the charge degrees of freedom. Finally, we investigate quantum phase transitions phases in low-dimensional fermionic and spin models that go from uniform to spatially inhomogeneous, i.e., dimerized, trimerized, or incommensurate, phases. We propose a new approach based on studying the length dependence of the von Neumann entropy and its corresponding Fourier spectrum for finite segments in the ground state of finite chains. Peaks at a nonzero wave vector are indicators of oscillatory behavior in decaying correlation functions and also provide significant information about certain relevant features of the excitation spectrum; in particular, they can identify the wave vector of soft modes in critical models.
In this thesis, several aspects of correlation effects in band insulators that were hitherto not addressed, both in equilibrium and non-equilibrium, are studied using the Ionic Hubbard model (IHM) at half-filling and Dynamical mean-field theory (DMFT). The IHM is an extension of the Hubbard model on a bipartite lattice with a staggered on-site “ionic potential Δ added in. The Hubbard model by itself is a tight-binding model of electrons hopping between (orbitals localized on) lattice sites, with amplitudes t and t’ for first neighbor and second neighbor hopping respectively, together with a coulomb repulsion energy cost of U for double occupancy (i.e., with both up and down spin electrons) at any lattice site. The studies in this thesis address strong correlation effects in this model using DMFT techniques which map the lattice problem to a self consistently embedded quantum impurity problem. The impurity problem itself is solved using state of the art continuous time quantum monte-carlo (CTQMC) techniques (Ch.s 3 and 4) as well as the somewhat simpler Iterated Perturbation Theory (IPT) (Ch.s 3, 5 and 6).
Chapter 3 of the thesis is devoted to a detailed analysis of the properties of the half-filled t-U-Δ IHM (i.e., with t’=0) on a Bethe lattice of infinite connectivity. It is shown conclusively here that for a finite Δ and at zero temperature (T=0), the IHM has a first order transition from the Band Insulator (BI) phase to an antiferromagnetic insulating (AFI) phase at a threshold U = UAF (which increases with Δ) such that the BI to AFI transition preempts the transition from the BI to the correlation induced paramagnetic metallic (PM) phase. Evidence is also presented for a quantum transition to a sliver of half-metal (HM) phase just after the AF order turns on, followed by a return to the AFI phase on further increasing U. With increasing T, the AF order is lost via a first-order transition for weak to intermediate U/t. In the strongly correlated regime, where the effective low-energy Hamiltonian is the Heisenberg model, the transition from the AFI to the paramagnetic Mott insulating phase (adiabatically connected to the BI phase) is of second order. As T increases, the range of U over which the AF order is stable shrinks, collapsing eventually to a line of tricritical points that separates the surfaces of first- and second-order phase transitions in the T-U-Δ space.
In Chapter 4 of the thesis the t-t’-U-Δ IHM on a square lattice is studied using DMFT+CTQMC. It is shown here that the presence of t’ frustrates the AF order for weak to intermediate correlations, resulting in the stabilization of the correlation induced PM phase over a broad region of the parameter space, although the AFI is always the stable phase for large enough U. In the intermediate coupling regimes, two other interesting phases show up as a result of the competition among U, Δ and t’ : a Ferrimagnetic metallic (FM) phase which has non-zero values of the uniform as well as staggered magnetization; and even more interesting, an…
We investigate the neutral-to-ionic insulator-insulator transition in one-dimensional materials by treating a strong-coupling effective model based on the ionic Hubbard model using the density-matrix renormalization group and finite-size scaling. The effective model, formulated in a spin-one representation, contains a single parameter. We carry out an extensive finite-size scaling analysis of the relevant gaps and susceptibilities to characterize the two zero-temperature transitions. We find that the transition from the ionic band-insulating phase to an intermediate spontaneously dimerized phase is Ising, and the transition from the dimerized phase to the Mott-insulating phase is Kosterlitz-Thouless, in agreement with the field-theory-based predictions.
Quantum Monte Carlo methods are used to study a quantum phase transition in a one-dimensional Hubbard model with on-site interaction U and a staggered ionic potential $(\ensuremath{\Delta}).$ Using recently formulated methods, the electronic polarization and localization are determined directly from the correlated ground state wave function and compared to results of previous work using exact diagonalization and Hartree-Fock. We find a transition from a symmetric band insulator to a broken-symmetry bond ordered (BO) phase as the ratio of $U/\ensuremath{\Delta}$ is increased, with a metallic point at the transition. Since it is known that at $\ensuremath{\Delta}=0$ the usual Hubbard model is a Mott insulator (MI) with no long-range order, we have searched for a second transition to this state by (i) increasing U at fixed $\ensuremath{\Delta}$ and (ii) decreasing $\ensuremath{\Delta}$ at fixed U. We find no transition from the BO to MI state, and we propose that the symmetric MI state exists only at $\ensuremath{\Delta}\ensuremath{\equiv}0.$
We report a systematic study of the transition from a band insulator (BI) to a Mott insulator (MI) in a one-dimensional Hubbard model at half-filling with an on-site Coulomb interaction U and an alternating periodic site potential V. We employ both the zero-temperature density matrix renormalization group (DMRG) method to determine the gap and critical behavior of the system and the finite-temperature transfer matrix renormalization group method to evaluate the thermodynamic properties. We find two critical points at U=Uc and U=Us that separate the BI and MI phases for a given V. A charge-neutral spin-singlet exciton band develops in the BI phase (U<Uc) and drops below the band gap when U exceeds a special point Ue. The exciton gap closes at the first critical point Uc while the charge and spin gaps persist and coincide between Uc<U<Us where the system is dimerized. Both the charge and spin gaps collapse at U=Us when the transition to the MI phase occurs. In the MI phase (U>Us) the charge gap increases almost linearly with U while the spin gap remains zero. These findings clarify earlier published results on the same model, and offer insights into several important issues regarding an appropriate scaling analysis of DMRG data and a full physical picture of the delicate nature of the phase transitions driven by electron correlation. The present work provides a comprehensive understanding for the critical behavior and phase diagram for the transition from BI to MI in one-dimensional correlated electron systems with a periodic alternating site potential.