The Recurrent Variational Approach applied to the Electronic Structure of Conjugated Polymers

TL;DR

This paper introduces the Recurrent Variational Approach (RVA) and applies it to analyze the electronic structure of conjugated polymers, providing analytical insights and comparisons with numerical methods like DMRG.

Contribution

It presents the first application of RVA to conjugated polymers, establishing an analogy with spin models and offering a new analytical approach for electronic structure calculations.

Findings

RVA successfully models conjugated polymers' electronic structure.

Good agreement with DMRG calculations.

Provides analytical insights into polymer electronic properties.

Abstract

In this note, first the Recurrent Variational Approach (RVA) is introduced by using as example a non-trivial spin-model, the spin-1/2 antiferromagnetic two-leg-ladder. Then, a first application of this scheme to the electronic structure of conjugated polymers is proposed. An analogy between the two-leg ladder and the dimerized chain described by the Extended Peierls-Hubbard Hamiltonian is underlined and comparisons are made with DMRG calculations. The proposed ansatz is useful to get some analytical insight and it is a good starting point for further improvements using the RVA.