Benchmarking the simplest slave-particle theory with Hubbard dimer

TL;DR

This paper evaluates the accuracy of the $ ext{Z}_2$ slave-spin method using a two-site Hubbard model, revealing its strengths and limitations in describing ground state and dynamic properties under different conditions.

Contribution

The study provides a comparative analysis of the slave-spin method with exact solutions, highlighting the importance of gauge constraints to avoid unphysical states.

Findings

Slave-spin mean-field recovers static properties at half filling.

Reliable for small U and T in dynamic calculations.

Fails for large U or T due to unphysical states.

Abstract

Slave-particle method is a powerful tool to tackle the correlation effect in quantum many-body physics. Although it has been successfully used to comprehend various intriguing problems, such as Mott metal-insulator transition and Kondo effect, there is still no convincing theory so far on the availability and limitation of this method. The abuse of slave-particle method may lead to wrong physics. As the simplest slave-particle method, $\mathbb{Z}_2$ slave spin, which is widely applied to many strongly correlated problems, is highly accessible and researchable. In this work, we will uncover the nature of $\mathbb{Z}_2$ slave-spin method by studying a two-site Hubbard model. After exploring some properties of this toy model, we make a comparative analysis of the results obtained by three methods: (i) slave-spin method on mean-field level, (ii) slave-spin method with gauge constraint and (iii) the exact solution as a benchmark. We find that, protected by particle-hole symmetry, the slave-spin mean-field method can recover the static properties of ground state exactly at half filling. Furthermore, in the parameter space where both $U$ and $T$ are small enough, slave-spin mean-field method is also reliable in calculating dynamic and thermal dynamic properties. However, when $U$ or $T$ is considerably large, the mean-field approximation gives ill-defined behavior, which results from the unphysical states in enlarged Hilbert space. These findings lead to our conclusion that the accuracy of slave particle can be guaranteed if we can exclude all unphysical states by enforcing gauge constraints.Our work demonstrates the promising prospect of slave-particle method in studying complex strongly correlated models with specific symmetry or in certain parameter space.