Comment on "Breakdown of the Luttinger sum rule within the Mott-Hubbard insulator", by J. Kokalj and P. Prelovsek [Phys. Rev. B 78, 153103 (2008), arXiv:arXiv:0803.4468]

TL;DR

This paper refutes previous claims that the Luttinger theorem fails in the Mott-Hubbard insulator phase of a 1D model, demonstrating that the theorem remains valid when considering finite-size effects and broken-symmetry ground states.

Contribution

The authors show that the finite-size scaling approach used by Kokalj and Prelovsek is unreliable and establish the validity of the Luttinger theorem in the presence of charge-density-wave order.

Findings

Finite-size scaling used by KP is unreliable for the considered system sizes.

The ground state for V > V_c is a charge-density-wave with a broken translational symmetry.

The Luttinger theorem remains valid for the broken-symmetry ground state.

Abstract

On the basis of an analysis of the numerical results corresponding to the half-filled 1D t-t'-V model on some finite lattices, Kokalj and Prelovsek (KP) have in a recent paper [Phys. Rev. B 78, 153103 (2008), arXiv:arXiv:0803.4468] concluded that the Luttinger theorem (LT) does not apply for the Mott-Hubbard (MH) insulating phase of this model (i.e. for V >> t) in the thermodynamic limit; KP even suggested, incorrectly, that failure of the LT were apparent for a half-filled finite system consisting of N=26 lattice sites. By employing a simple model for the self-energy Sigma of a MH state, we show that the finite-size-scaling approach of the type utilised by KP is not reliable for the system sizes considered by KP. On the basis of the equivalence of the model under consideration (at half-filling and for t'/t << 1) and the XXZ spin-chain Hamiltonian for SU(2) spins, we further show that for V > V_c(t,t') the system under consideration has a charge-density-wave (CDW) ground state (GS) in the thermodynamic limit, corresponding to a doubling of the unit cell in comparison with that specific to the underlying lattice. Although this GS is also insulating, its spectral gap is due to the broken translational symmetry of the GS; it is not a correlation-induced MH gap. The LT is therefore a priori valid for this GS. This fact establishes that the conclusion by KP is indeed erroneous. Finally, we present a heuristic argument due to Volovik that sheds light on the mechanism underlying the robustness of the LT. In an appendix, we present the details of the calculation of the single-particle Green function of the broken-symmetry GS of the model under consideration by means of bosonization and in terms of the form factors of a class of soliton-generating fields pertaining to the quantum sine-Gordon Hamiltonian. [Shortened abstract]