Exact ground states of correlated electrons on pentagon chains

TL;DR

This paper constructs exact ground states for correlated electrons on pentagon chains, revealing ferromagnetic and half-metallic phases driven by site-dependent interactions and band flattening effects.

Contribution

It introduces a method to find exact ground states for correlated electrons on pentagon chains using positive semidefinite Hamiltonian transformations and constructs unique nonlocal wave functions.

Findings

Exact ferromagnetic and half-metallic ground states identified.

Interaction tuning induces effective flat bands.

Band flattening effect extends beyond pentagon chains.

Abstract

We construct a class of exact ground states for correlated electrons on pentagon chains in the high density region and discuss their physical properties. In this procedure the Hamiltonian is first cast in a positive semidefinite form using composite operators as a linear combination of creation operators acting on the sites of finite blocks. In the same step, the interaction is also transformed to obtain terms which require for their minimum eigenvalue zero at least one electron on each site. The transformed Hamiltonian matches the original Hamiltonian through a nonlinear system of equations whose solutions place the deduced ground states in restricted regions of the parameter space. In the second step, nonlocal product wave functions in position space are constructed. They are proven to be unique ground states which describe non-saturated ferromagnetic and correlated half metallic states. These solutions emerge when the strength of the Hubbard interaction $U_i$ is site dependent inside the unit cell. In the deduced phases, the interactions tune the bare dispersive band structure such to develop an effective upper flat band. We show that this band flattening effect emerges for a broader class of chains and is not restricted to pentagon chains. For the characterization of the deduced solutions, uniqueness proofs, exact ground state expectation values for long-range hopping amplitudes and correlation functions are also calculated. The study of physical reasons which lead to the appearance of ferromagnetism has revealed a new mechanism for the emergence of an ordered phase, described here in details (because of lack of space see the continuation in the paper).