We present a numerical study of the Hubbard-Holstein model in one dimension at half filling, including finite-frequency quantum phonons. At half filling, the effects of the electron-phonon and electron-electron interactions compete with the Holstein phonon coupling acting as an effective negative Hubbard on-site interaction U that promotes on-site electron pairs and a Peierls charge-density wave state. Most previous work on this model has assumed that only Peierls or Mott phases are possible at half filling. However, there has been speculation that a third metallic phase exists between the Peierls and Mott phases. We confirm the intermediate phase, and show that the Luttinger liquid correlation exponent K(rho) >1 in this region, indicating dominant superconducting pair correlations. We explore the full phase diagram as a function of Hubbard U, phonon coupling constant, and phonon frequency.
By using variational wave functions and quantum Monte Carlo techniques, we investigate the interplay between electron-electron and electron-phonon interactions in the two-dimensional Hubbard-Holstein model. Here, the ground-state phase diagram is triggered by several energy scales, i.e., the electron hopping
t, the on-site electron-electron interaction
U, the phonon energy ${\ensuremath{\omega}}_{0}$, and the electron-phonon coupling
g. At half filling, the ground state is an antiferromagnetic insulator for $U\ensuremath{\gtrsim}2{g}^{2}/{\ensuremath{\omega}}_{0}$, while it is a charge-density-wave (or bipolaronic) insulator for $U\ensuremath{\lesssim}2{g}^{2}/{\ensuremath{\omega}}_{0}$. In addition to these phases, we find a superconducting phase that intrudes between them. For ${\ensuremath{\omega}}_{0}/t=1$, superconductivity emerges when both
U/t and $2{g}^{2}/t{\ensuremath{\omega}}_{0}$ are small; then, by increasing the value of the phonon energy ${\ensuremath{\omega}}_{0}$, it extends along the transition line between antiferromagnetic and charge-density-wave insulators. Away from half filling, phase separation occurs when doping the charge-density-wave insulator, while a uniform (superconducting) ground state is found when doping the superconducting phase. In the analysis of finite-size effects, it is extremely important to average over twisted boundary conditions, especially in the weak-coupling limit and in the doped case.
The Hubbard-Holstein model describes fermions on a discrete lattice, with on-site repulsion between fermions and a coupling to phonons that are localized on sites. Generally, at half-filling, increasing the coupling
g to the phonons drives the system towards a Peierls charge density wave state, whereas increasing the electron-electron interaction
U drives the fermions into a Mott antiferromagnet. At low
g and
U, or when doped, the system is metallic. In one dimension, using quantum Monte Carlo simulations, we study the case where fermions have a long-range coupling to phonons, with characteristic range $\ensuremath{\xi}$, interpolating between the Holstein and Fr\"ohlich limits. Without electron-electron interaction, the fermions adopt a Peierls state when the coupling to the phonons is strong enough. This state is destabilized by a small coupling range $\ensuremath{\xi}$ and leads to a collapse of the fermions, and, consequently, phase separation. Increasing interaction
U will drive any of these three phases (metallic, Peierls, phase separation) into a Mott insulator phase. The phase separation region is once again present in the $U\ensuremath{\ne}0$ case, even for small values of the coupling range.
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.
Within the time-dependent Gutzwiller approximation applied to one-dimensional Holstein and Su-Schrieffer-Heeger-Hubbard models, we study the influence of electron correlations on the phonon self-energy. For the local Holstein coupling, we find that the phonon-frequency renormalization gets weakened upon increasing the on-site interaction
U for all momenta. In contrast, correlations can enhance the phonon-frequency shift for small wave vectors in the Su-Schrieffer-Heeger-Hubbard model. Moreover, the time-dependent Gutzwiller approximation applied to the latter model provides a mechanism which leads to phonon-frequency corrections at intermediate momenta due to the coupling with double-occupancy fluctuations. Both models display a shift of the nesting induced to a
q=0 instability when the on-site interaction becomes sufficiently strong and thus establishing phase separation as a generic phenomenon of strongly correlated electron-phonon coupled systems.
Monte Carlo simulations are performed to examine superconductivity and charge-density-wave fluctuations in the infinite-dimensional electron-phonon Holstein model. The electron-phonon system interpolates between an attractive, static, Falicov-Kimball model that always exhibits charge-density-wave order and an attractive, instantaneous, Hubbard model that always superconducts as a function of phonon frequency. The maximum charge-density-wave transition temperature at half-filling is an order of magnitude smaller than the effective electronic bandwidth and is virtually independent of the phonon frequency. The maximum superconducting transition temperature depends strongly on phonon frequency and is bounded from above by the maximum charge-density-wave transition temperature. The exact solution is compared to both weak-coupling expansions and strong-coupling expansions. The effective phonon potential becomes anharmonic and develops a double-well structure that deepens as the electron-phonon interaction increases.