We investigate the ground state of the Hubbard model in one and two dimensions. Long perturbation expansions in t/U, i.e., about the atomic limit, are computed for the ground-state energy of finite lattices with N\ensuremath{\le}10 for arbitrary electron density. We also extend the series for the one-dimensional infinite lattice by expanding the Bethe-ansatz equations. Pad\'e-approximant analysis of the series shows a distribution of singularities that varies dramatically with the electron density n. We also investigate the effect of inclusion of next-nearest-neighbor hopping. This appears to have little effect at half-filling but is significant away from half-filling.
The exact phase diagrams of the one-dimensional Hubbard model, both attractive and repulsive, in the presence of an arbitrary magnetic field h for various electron concentrations n and on-site interaction strengths U <0 or U >0 are calculated and investigated. The exact ground-state properties, namely, the ground-state energy, the average spin (magnetization), the concentration of the doubly occupied sites, the kinetic energy, the chemical potential, the spin (magnetic) susceptibility and the charge compressibility, are calculated and examined over a wide range of interaction strengths U for various h and n . It is found that the spin susceptibility at half-filling is non-analytic and changes discontinuously as U →0. The exact theory shows the absence of a charge energy gap in the U ⩽0 region for all n and provides, for the chemical potential, the rigorous upper and lower bounds for half-filled and empty bands respectively. The analytical results derived for the weak-coupling limit and asymptotic expansions for strong coupling are in full agreement with the numerical calculations.