In this dissertation we report on the application of the Liouville Operator Resolvent technique (LRM) to two hamiltonians used to model highly correlated systems: Falicov-Kimball and Anderson Lattice. We calculate specific heats, magnetic susceptibilities, thermal averages of physical operators, and energy bands. We demonstrate that the LRM is a viable method for investigating many body problems. For the Falicov-Kimball, an exact calculation of the atomic limit shows no sharp metal-insulator transition. A truncation approximation for the full hamiltonian has a smooth evolution from the atomic limit with the opening of a band for the conduction electrons. No phase transition was observed. A bose space calculation using the proper boson norm indicates that the conduction band induces a correlation between localized electrons on nearest-neighbor sites. It is not known if this effect is real or a by-product of the approximation. We applied the LRM to the Anderson Lattice and several of its limiting cases. In the limit of no hybridization, for both the symmetric and asymmetric (mixed-valence) parameter sets, we found that the thermodynamics could be described as competition between closely-lying energy levels. The effects that dominate are those that minimize the thermal average of the hamiltonian. A simple model is presented in which only hybridization between two localized orbitals is allowed. It shows that hybridization can give rise to mixed valence phenomena as the temperature approaches zero. For the full Anderson Lattice hybridization causes relatively small shifts in the occupation numbers of the localized and conduction electrons. However, these shifts can have dramatic effects on the physical properties as demonstrated by the magnetic susceptibilities. Band structures of the eigenenergies of the Liouville operator, for both parameter sets, reveal that low-lying excitations associated with some of the basis vector operators may split out from the fermi level and become significant at low temperatures. In addition, we report on progress toward extending the calculation to bose space using a commutator norm.
In this dissertation we report on the application of the Liouville Operator Resolvent technique (LRM) to two hamiltonians used to model highly correlated systems: Falicov-Kimball and Anderson Lattice. We calculate specific heats, magnetic susceptibilities, thermal averages of physical operators, and energy bands. We demonstrate that the LRM is a viable method for investigating many body problems. For the Falicov-Kimball, an exact calculation of the atomic limit shows no sharp metal-insulator transition. A truncation approximation for the full hamiltonian has a smooth evolution from the atomic limit with the opening of a band for the conduction electrons. No phase transition was observed. A bose space calculation using the proper boson norm indicates that the conduction band induces a correlation between localized electrons on nearest-neighbor sites. It is not known if this effect is real or a by-product of the approximation. We applied the LRM to the Anderson Lattice and several of its limiting cases. In the limit of no hybridization, for both the symmetric and asymmetric (mixed-valence) parameter sets, we found that the thermodynamics could be described as competition between closely-lying energy levels. The effects that dominate are those that minimize the thermal average of the hamiltonian. A simple model is presented in which only hybridization between two localized orbitals is allowed. It shows that hybridization can give rise to mixed valence phenomena as the temperature approaches zero. For the full Anderson Lattice hybridization causes relatively small shifts in the occupation numbers of the localized and conduction electrons. However, these shifts can have dramatic effects on the physical properties as demonstrated by the magnetic susceptibilities. Band structures of the eigenenergies of the Liouville operator, for both parameter sets, reveal that low-lying excitations associated with some of the basis vector operators may split out from the fermi level and become significant at low temperatures. In addition, we report on progress toward extending the calculation to bose space using a commutator norm.
Various methods and approximation schemes are used to study many-electron interacting systems. Two important many-particle models, the Anderson model and the Hubbard model, and their electromagnetic properties have been investigated in many parameter regimes, and applied to physical systems. An Anderson single-impurity model Hamiltonian based calculation of the magnetic susceptibility is performed for YbN in the presence of crystal fields using an alteration of the Non-Crossing Approximation proposed by Zwicknagl et.al., incorporating parameters obtained from ab initio band structure calculations. It yields good agreement with experimental data. For the Anderson lattice model, a variational scheme which uses specific many-electron wavefunctions as basis is applied to both one- and two-dimensional systems represented by symmetric Anderson lattice Hamiltonians. Without much computational effort, the ground state energy is well approximated, especially in strong-coupling limit. Some electronic properties are examined using the variational ground state wavefunction. The one-dimensional Hubbard model has been solved exactly for small-size clusters by diagonalizing the Hamiltonian in the basis of many-electron Bloch states. The results for the energy spectrum and eigenfunctions of the ground state and low-lying excited states are presented. Also, mean field calculations of the two-dimensional single-band Hubbard model and Cu-O lattice model (three-band Hubbard model) are carried out for various physical quantities including the energy, occupation probability, staggered magnetization, momentum distribution Fermi surface and density of states, by using a projection operator formalism. To develop a systematic approach to solving many-electron problems, the many-particle partition function for the free electron gas system is explored using a cumulant expansion scheme. Starting from the ground state, the partition function can be approximated to any order in terms of excitation energy. Its application to interacting systems such as the Anderson model and the Hubbard model is briefly discussed.
In this work, we study the Anderson-Falicov-Kimball model within the dynamical mean field theory for the Bethe lattice, restricting our analysis to the nonmagnetic case. The one-particle density of states is obtained by both arithmetic and geometric averages over disorder, since only the latter can detect localization in the absence of an energy gap. Varying the strengths of Coulomb interaction and disorder at zero temperature, we construct phase diagrams for this model, where we distinguish spectral regions with localized states, with extended states, or with a correlation-induced gap. With this, we identify metal-insulator transitions driven by correlation and disorder, as well as the competition between these effects. This is done for various band fillings, since our main interest here is to study how the variation of the electron density affects the phase diagrams previously obtained for half-filling. The picture revealed by the density of states is further checked by evaluating the static and dynamic conductivities, including temperature effects.
The extended Falicov-Kimball model, with both an on-site hybridization potential and dispersive narrow band, is examined within the saddle-point approximation to the Kotliar-Ruckenstein [Phys. Rev. Lett. 57, 1362 (1986)] slave-boson theory. We first set the hybridization potential to zero and find that the phase diagram depends strongly on the orbital structure: for degenerate orbitals, a correlated-insulating state is found at sufficiently strong interaction strengths, whereas a finite orbital energy difference can lead to discontinuous valence transitions. The obtained phase diagram is very sensitive to the presence of a finite hybridization potential. As in Hartree-Fock theory, we find an enhancement of the hybridization by the interorbital Coulomb repulsion. The more precise treatment of correlation effects, however, leads to large deviations from the Hartree-Fock results. In the limit of vanishing hybridization, an excitonic insulator state is only found when the orbitals are degenerate, which restricts this phase to a much smaller parameter space than in other available mean-field theories.
We investigate an extended version of the periodic Anderson model (the so-called periodic Anderson-Hubbard model) with the aim to understand the role of interaction between conduction electrons in the formation of the heavy-fermion and mixed-valence states. Two methods are used: (i) variational calculation with the Gutzwiller wave function optimizing numerically the ground-state energy and (ii) exact diagonalization of the Hamiltonian for short chains. The f-level occupancy and the renormalization factor of the quasiparticles are calculated as a function of the energy of the f orbital for a wide range of the interaction parameters. The results obtained by the two methods are in reasonably good agreement for the periodic Anderson model. The agreement is maintained even when the interaction between band electrons, Ud, is taken into account, except for the half-filled case. This discrepancy can be explained by the difference between the physics of the one- and higher-dimensional models. We find that this interaction shifts and widens the energy range of the bare f level, where heavy-fermion behavior can be observed. For large-enough Ud this range may lie even above the bare conduction band. The Gutzwiller method indicates a robust transition from Kondo insulator to Mott insulator in the half-filled model, while Ud enhances the quasiparticle mass when the filling is close to half filling.
Actinide- and Lanthanide based compounds are often considered as heavy Fermion (HF) systems. The essential ingredient for these systems is a localized d- or f-shell electron per lattice site which hybridizes with a non-interacting conduction band of p- or d-shell electrons. For temperatures below the so called coherence temperature Tc, the localized electrons stop to act like mag- netic scatterers known from the Kondo effect. There the conduction band electrons screen the local magnetic moments coherently. As a main effect the conduction electrons build a Fermi liquid (FL) of quasiparticles with strongly enhanced masses which exceed 10-1000 times the mass of the original electrons. These enhancements can be seen experimentally in an increased heat capacity coefficient and Pauli susceptibility. \nIn this work we employ the periodic Anderson model (PAM) to describe the paramagnetic phase of the heavy Fermion compounds. To solve the compli- cated many body problem the dynamical mean-field theory is adopted with the numerical renormalization group technique as impurity solver. \nWe find that for low conduction band fillings Tc decreases drastically, which is in accordance with the exhaustion effect predicted by Nozières [5]. Additionally we find, that the form of the free conduction band density of states is decisive to obtain a FL or a Mott insulating (MI) phase for strongly depleted conduction band fillings. \nFurthermore we investigate the PAM on a bipartite lattice, the coherence temperatures for each sublattice and especially the case of vanishing hybridiza- tion for one sublattice. In the latter case the system resembles a conduction band with only half the localized moment sites coupled to it. Our results show that it depends strongly on the chosen parameters if there is only one scale for the whole lattice or two distinct scales for each sublattice. Especially decoupling one sublattice leads to two separated scales. \nIn the last part the attention is focused on the two-impurity Anderson model and its solution via the DMFT method. We investigate the Anderson model and compare results to direct NRG calculations. Importantly, the two-impurity DMFT method can be easier extended to multi-impurity systems than the NRG on its own. This might lead to a method to efficiently examine multi- impurity systems.
Strongly correlated systems, i.e., quantum materials for which the interactions between its constituents are strong, are good candidates for the development of applications based on quantum-mechanical principles, such as quantum computers. Two paradigmatic models of strongly correlated systems are heavy-fermionic systems and one-dimensional spin-12 systems, with and without quenched disorder. In the past decade, improvement in computational methods and a vast enhancement in computational power has made it possible to study these systems in a a non-perturbative manner. In this thesis we present state-of-the-art numerical methods to investigate the properties of strongly correlated systems, and we apply these methods to solve a couple of selected problems in quantum condensed matter theory. We start by revisiting the phase diagram of the Falicov-Kimball model on the square lattice which can be considered as a heavy-fermionic systems. This model describes an interplay between conduction electrons and heavy electrons and reveals several distinct metal-insulator phase transitions. Using a lattice Monte-Carlo method, we study the transport properties of the model. Our analysis describes the role of temperature and interaction strength on the metal-insulator phase transitions in the Falicov-Kimball model. The second part of the thesis investigate the spatial structure of the entanglement in ground and thermal statesof the transverse-field Ising chain. We use the logarithmic negativity as a measure for the entanglement between two disjoint blocks. We investigate how logarithmic negativity depends on the spatial separation between two blocks, which can be viewed as the entanglement analog of a spatial correlation function. We find sharp entanglement thresholds at a critical distance beyond which the logarithmic negativity vanishes exactly and thus the two blocks become unentangled. Our results hold even in the presence of long-ranged quantum correlations, i.e., at the system’s quantum critical point. Using Time-Evolving Block Decimation (TEBD), we explore this feature as a function of temperature and size of the two blocks. We present a simple model to describe our numerical observations. In the last part of this thesis, we introduce an order parameter for a many-body localized spin-glass (MBL-SG) phase. We show that many-body localized spin-glass order can also be detected from two-site reduced density matrices, which we use to construct an eigenstate spin-glass order parameter. We find that this eigenstate spin-glass order parameter captures spin-glass phases in random Ising chains, both in many-body eigenstates as well as in the nonequilibrium dynamics, from a local in time measurement. We discuss how our results can be used to observe MBL-SG order within current experiments in Rydberg atoms and trapped ion systems.