Charge Density Waves and Bond Order Waves in a quarter filled extended Hubbard ladder

TL;DR

This paper explores the phase diagram of a quarter-filled Hubbard ladder, revealing competing charge density wave and bond-order wave phases, and analyzes quantum phase transitions and effects of doping and magnetic fields.

Contribution

It provides a detailed phase diagram considering interchain interactions and identifies the nature of phase transitions in the ladder model.

Findings

Identification of charge density wave and bond-order wave phases

Mapping of the phase diagram in the J-V parameter space

Classification of quantum phase transitions as first or second order

Abstract

We investigate the phase diagram of a quarter filled Hubbard ladder with nearest-neighbor Coulomb repulsion using bosonization and renormalization group approach. Focusing on the strong-repulsion regime, we discuss the effect of an interchain exchange interaction J and interchain repulsion V on the possible ground states of the system and charge order configurations. Since the spin excitations always possess a gap, we find competing bond-order wave and charge density wave phases as possible ground states of the ladder model. We discuss the elementary excitations in these various phases and point an analogy between the excitations on some of these phases and those of a Kondo-Heisenberg insulator. We also study the order of the quantum phase transitions between the different ground states of the system. We obtain second order transitions in the Ising or SU(2)_2 universality class or first order transitions. We map the complete phase diagram in the J-V plane by integrating perturbative renormalization-group equations. Finally, we discuss the effect of doping away from half-filling and the effect of an applied magnetic field.