The search for realistic one-dimensional (1D) models that exhibit dominant superconducting (SC) fluctuations effects has a long history. In these 1D systems, the effects of commensurate band fillings---strongest at half-filling---and electronic repulsions typically lead to a finite charge gap and the favoring of insulating density wave ordering over superconductivity. Accordingly, recent proposals suggesting a gapless metallic state in the Holstein-Hubbard (HH) model, possibly superconducting, have generated considerable interest and controversy, with the most recent work demonstrating that the putative dominant superconducting state likely does not exist. In this paper we study a model with nonlocal electron-phonon interactions, in addition to electron-electron interactions. This model unambiguously possesses dominant superconducting fluctuations at half filling in a large region of parameter space. Using both the numerical multi-scale functional renormalization group (MFRG) for the full model and an analytic conventional renormalization group for a bosonized version of the model, we demonstrate the existence of these dominant SC fluctuations and show that they arise because the spin-charge coupling at high energies is weakened by the nonlocal electron-phonon interaction and the charge gap is destroyed by the resultant suppression of the Umklapp process. The existence of the dominant SC pairing instability in this half-filled 1D system suggests that nonlocal boson-mediated interactions may be important in the superconductivity observed in the organic superconductors.
Using a multistep renormalization group method, we study the low-temperature phases of the interacting one-dimensional (1D) electron gas coupled to phonons. We obtain analytic expressions for the weak-coupling quantum phase boundaries of the 1D extended Holstein-Hubbard model and the 1D extended Peierls-Hubbard model for general band-filling and phonon frequency. Away from half-filling, the phase diagrams are characterized by a delicate competition between spin density wave, charge density wave, and superconducting orders. We study the dependence of the ground state on the electron-phonon (el-ph) and electron-electron (el-el) coupling strengths, the screening length, electron bandwidth, phonon frequency, doping, and type of phonon. Unlike the case in Fermi liquids, in 1D the el-ph coupling is strongly renormalized, often to stronger values. Even when the bare phonon-induced attraction is weak compared to the bare el-el repulsion, a small amount of retardation can cause the renormalized el-ph interaction to dominate the problem. We find cases in which a repulsive el-el interaction enhances the superconducting susceptibility in the presence of a retarded el-ph interaction. The spin gap and superconducting susceptibility are found to be strongly dependent on the deviation from half-filling (doping). In some cases, the superconducting susceptibility varies nonmonotonically with doping and exhibits a maximum at a particular doping. For a quasi-1D array of weakly coupled, fluctuating 1D chains, the superconducting transition temperature
Tc also exhibits a maximum as a function of doping. The effect of changing the ion mass (isotope effect) on
Tc is found to be largest near half-filling and to decrease rapidly with doping.
We used exact diagonalization of small clusters and exact results in various limits to determine the phase diagram and the critical exponents of the one-dimensional (1D) U-V model at quarter-filling. We found an instability of the Luttinger liquid to a charge density wave (CDW) insulator across a boundary going from ( U, V ) = (+ ∞ , 2 t ) to (4 t , + ∞ ). In the metallic phase, the dominant fluctuations are superconducting if V is large enough and spin density wave (SDW) otherwise. In the latter case, the critical exponent α of the momentum distribution does not exceed 9/16. The relevance of these results to 1D organic conductors is discussed.