Paramagnetic solutions of the ionic Hubbard model at half-filling in dimensions $D>2$ indicate that the band and the Mott insulator phases are separated by a metallic phase. We present zero-temperature dynamical mean-field theory solutions, which include antiferromagnetic long-range order, and show that the one-particle spectral functions always possess an energy gap and therefore the system is insulating for all interaction strengths. The staggered charge density modulation coexists with antiferromagnetic long-range order of Néel type.
We study the ionic Hubbard model at temperature T=0 within the mean-field approximation, and show that the charge gap does not close completely at the ionic-band insulator to antiferromagnetic insulator transition, contrary to previous expectations. Furthermore, we find an intermediate phase for on-site repulsions $U>U_c$ for different lattices, and calculate the phase diagram for the ionic Hubbard model with alternating U, corresponding to a Cu-O lattice.
The ionic Hubbard model is investigated at half filling at zero temperature. We apply the cellular dynamical mean-field theory to the one-dimensional ionic Hubbard model to compute local quantities such as double occupancy and staggered charge density. Both quantities provide general transition behavior of the model from a band insulating phase to a Mott insulating phase. The renormalized band gap is introduced as an efficient order parameter for the transition from a band insulator. We also present the spectral properties of the ionic Hubbard model, which exhibit characteristic features for b…
We derive an effective spin Hamiltonian for the one-dimensional half-filled tetramerized ionic-Hubbard model in the limit of strong on-site repulsion. We show that the effective Hamiltonian which describes the low-energy spin sector of the model is a spin S=1/2 Heisenberg Hamiltonian with alternating nearest-neighbour exchange.
Using the nonlocal coherent-potential approximation we study the effect of intersite spatial correlations on the transition from band insulator to metal as well as from metal to Mott insulator in the "alloy analogy" approach to the paramagnetic solution of the half-filled ionic Hubbard model. We find that intersite spatial correlations enhance the metallic phase.
A detailed study of electronic phase transitions in the ionic Hubbard model at half filling is presented. Within the dynamical mean field approximation a series of transitions from the band insulator via a metallic state to a Mott-Hubbard insulating phase is found at intermediate values of the one-body potential $Δ$ with increasing the Coulomb interaction $U$. We obtain a critical region in which the metallic phase disappears and a {\it novel} coexistence phase between the band and the Mott insulating state sets in. Our results are consistent with those obtained at low dimensions, thus they pr…
We investigate the ground state phase diagram of the one-dimensional ionic Hubbard model with an alternating potential at half-filling by the bosonization technique as well as by numerical diagonalization of finite systems with the Lanczos and DMRG methods. Our results support the existence of a single "metallic" transition point from a band to a correlated insulator with simultaneous charge and bond-charge order. In addition, we present results for the optical conductivity obtained by the dynamical DMRG method. The insulator-insulator phase transition scenario is discussed in detail including…
The interaction-driven insulator-to-metal transition has been reported in the ionic Hubbard model (IHM) for moderate interaction $U$, while its metallic phase only occupies a narrow region in the phase diagram. To explore the enlargement of the metallic regime, we extend the ionic Hubbard model to two coupled layers and study the interplay of interlayer hybridization $V$ and two types of intralayer staggered potentials $Δ$: one with the same (in-phase) and the other with a $π$-phase shift (anti-phase) potential between layers. Our determinant Quantum Monte Carlo (DQMC) simulations at lowest ac…
We derive an effective spin Hamiltonian for the one-dimensional half-filled asymmetric ionic Hubbard model with alternating on-site interaction in the limit of strong repulsion. It is shown that the effective Hamiltonian is that of a spin $S=1/2$ anisotropic $XXZ$ Heisenberg chain with alternating next-nearest-neighbor and three-spin couplings in the presence of a uniform and a staggered magnetic field.
The one-electron spectral-weight function of the half-filled ionic Hubbard model is calculated by means of Quantum Monte Carlo. A metallic regimen occurs between two values of the coupling constant (Hubbard U) U1 < U2 . The system is a band insulator below U1, and an increasingly antiferromagnetic (AF) insulator above U2 evolving into a Mott insulator as U tends to infinity . The intermediate regimen which is both AF and dimerized, is caused by a two-peak structure at k = 0,5 pi (the Fermi surface). As U increases both peaks approach each other, overlap, and separate again, the system becoming…
We study quantum phase transitions by measuring the bond energy, the number density, and the half-chain entanglement entropy in the one-dimensional ionic Hubbard model. By performing the infinite density matrix renormalization group with matrix product operator, we obtain ground states as the canonical form of matrix product states. Depending on the chemical potential and the staggered potential, the number density and the half-chain entanglement entropy shows clear signatures of the Mott transition. Our results confirm the success of the matrix product operator method for investigation of iti…
We investigate the neutral-to-ionic insulator-insulator transition in one-dimensional materials by treating a strong-coupling effective model based on the ionic Hubbard model using the density-matrix renormalization group and finite-size scaling. The effective model, formulated in a spin-one representation, contains a single parameter. We carry out an extensive finite-size scaling analysis of the relevant gaps and susceptibilities to characterize the two zero-temperature transitions. We find that the transition from the ionic band-insulating phase to an intermediate spontaneously dimerized pha…
Density matrix renormalization group methods are used to investigate the quantum phase diagram of a one-dimensional half-filled ionic Hubbard model with bond-charge attraction, which can be mapped from the Su-Schrieffer-Heeger-type electron-phonon coupling at the antiadiabatic limit. A bond order wave (dimerized) phase which separates the band insulator from the Mott insulator always exists as long as electron-phonon coupling is present. This is qualitatively different from that at the adiabatic limit. Our results indicate that electron-electron interaction, ionic potential and quantum phonon …
We use Perturbative Continuous Unitary Transformations (PCUT) to study the one dimensional Extended Ionic Hubbard Model (EIHM) at half-filling in the band insulator region. The extended ionic Hubbard model, in addition to the usual ionic Hubbard model, includes an inter-site nearest-neighbor (n.n.) repulsion, $V$. We consider the ionic potential as unperturbed part of the Hamiltonian, while the hopping and interaction (quartic) terms are treated as perturbation. We calculate total energy and ionicity in the ground state. Above the ground state, (i) we calculate the single particle excitation s…
We employ the dynamical mean field approximation to study the effects of ionic potential ($Δ$) on the square lattice Hubbard model. At half-filling when the staggered potential ($Δ$) dominates the on-site Hubbard interaction ($U$), the system is in the band insulator phase. We find that competition between $U$ and $Δ$ can suppress the gap to zero and leading to an intermediate metallic region. At the large-$U$ limit, we identify a Mott insulator phase where the gap opens again and increases upon increasing the Hubbard interaction U. For $U\leq 9t$ and $Δ\approx 0$ the phase of the system is me…
We extend to charge and bond operators the transformation that maps the ionic Hubbard model at half filling onto an effective spin Hamiltonian. Using these operators we calculate the amplitude of the charge density wave in different dimensions. In one dimension, the charge-charge correlations at large distance d decay as 1/(d^3 ln^{3/2}d), in spite of the presence of a charge gap, as a consequence of remaining charge-spin coupling. Bond-bond correlations decay as (-1)^d 1/(d ln^{3/2}d) as in the usual Hubbard model.
We investigate the ground-state phase diagram of the one-dimensional "ionic" Hubbard model with an alternating periodic potential at half-filling by numerical diagonalization of finite systems with the Lanczos and density matrix renormalization group (DMRG) methods. We identify an insulator-insulator phase transition from a band to a correlated insulator with simultaneous charge and bond-charge order. The transition point is characterized by the vanishing of the optical excitation gap while simultaneously the charge and spin gaps remain finite and equal. Indications for a possible second trans…
We present a numerical study of the charge dynamical structure factor N(k,omega) of a one-dimensional (1D) ionic Hubbard model in the Mott insulator phase. We show that the low-energy spectrum of N(k,omega) is expressed in terms of the spin operators for the spin degrees of freedom. Numerical results of N(k,omega) for the spin degrees of freedom, obtained by the Lanczos diagonalization method, well reproduce the low-energy spectrum of N(k,omega) of the 1D ionic Hubbard model. In addition, we show that these spectral peaks probe the dispersion of the spin-singlet excitations of the system and a…
We derive an effective Hamiltonian for the ionic Hubbard model at half filling, extended to include nearest-neighbor repulsion. Using a spin-particle transformation, the effective model is mapped onto simple spin-1 models in two particular cases. Using another spin-particle transformation, a slightly modified model is mapped into an SU(3) antiferromagnetic Heisenberg model whose exact ground state is known to be spontaneously dimerized. From the effective models several properties of the dimerized phase are discussed, like ferroelectricity and fractional charge excitations. Using bosonization …
Dynamics of charge density and lattice displacements after the neutral phase is photoexcited is studied by solving the time-dependent Schrödinger equation for a one-dimensional extended Peierls-Hubbard model with alternating potentials. In contrast to the ionic-to-neutral transition studied previously, the neutral-to-ionic transition proceeds in an uncooperative manner as far as the one-dimensional system is concerned. The final ionicity is a linear function of the increment of the total energy. After the electric field is turned off, the electronic state does not significantly change, roughly…
We investigate the phases of the ionic Hubbard model in a two-dimensional square lattice using determinant quantum Monte Carlo (DQMC). At half-filling, when the interaction strength or the staggered potential dominate we find Mott and band insulators, respectively. When these two energies are of the same order we find a metallic region. Charge and magnetic structure factors demonstrate the presence of antiferromagnetism only in the Mott region, although the externally imposed density modulation is present everywhere in the phase diagram. Away from half-filling, other insulating phases are foun…
The Mott-Hubbard transition is studied in the context of the two-dimensional Hubbard model. Analytical calculations show the existence of a critical value Uc of the potential strength which separates a paramagnetic metallic phase from a paramagnetic insulating phase. Calculations of the density of states and double occupancy show that the ground state in the insulating phase contains always a small fraction of empty and doubly occupied sites. The structure of the ground state is studied by considering the probability amplitude of intersite hopping. The results indicate that the ground state of…
Unconventional phases often occur where two competing mechanisms compensate. An excellent example is the ionic Hubbard model where the alternating local potential $δ$, favoring a band insulator (BI), competes with the local repulsion $U$, favoring a Mott insulator (MI). By continuous unitary transformations we derive effective models in which we study the softening of various excitons. The softening signals the instability towards new phases that we describe on the mean-field level. On increasing $U$ from the BI in two dimensions, we find a bond-ordered phase breaking orientational symmetry du…
Quantum Monte Carlo methods are used to study a quantum phase transition in a 1D Hubbard model with a staggered ionic potential (D). Using recently formulated methods, the electronic polarization and localization are determined directly from the correlated ground state wavefunction and compared to results of previous work using exact diagonalization and Hartree-Fock. We find that the model undergoes a thermodynamic transition from a band insulator (BI) to a broken-symmetry bond ordered (BO) phase as the ratio of U/D is increased. Since it is known that at D = 0 the usual Hubbard model is a Mot…
We investigate paramagnetic metal-insulator transitions in the infinite-dimensional ionic Hubbard model at finite temperatures. By means of the dynamical mean-field theory with an impurity solver of the continuous-time quantum Monte Carlo method, we show that an increase in the interaction strength brings about a crossover from a band insulating phase to a metallic one, followed by a first-order transition to a Mott insulating phase. The first-order transition turns into a crossover above a certain critical temperature, which becomes higher as the staggered lattice potential is increased. Furt…
We investigate the local moment formation in the half-filled SU($N$) Hubbard model under a staggered ionic potential. As the Hubbard $U$ increases, the charge fluctuations are suppressed and eventually frozen when $U$ is above a critical value $U_c$, marking the development of well-defined local moment with integer $m$ fermions on the A-sublattice and $(N-m)$ fermions on the B-sublattice, respectively. We obtain an analytical solution for $U_c$ for the paramagnetic ground state within the variational Gutzwiller approximation and renormalized mean field theory. For large $N$, $U_c$ is found to …
We apply a diagrammatic expansion method around the atomic limit (U >> t) for the U-t-t' Hubbard model at half filling and finite temperature by means of a continued fraction representation of the one-particle Green's function. From the analysis of the spectral function A(\vec{k},ω) we find an energy dispersion relation with a (cos k_x-cos k_y)^2 modulation of the energy gap in the insulating phase. This anisotropy is compared with experimental ARPES results on insulating cuprates.
We report ten ground states arising from strong correlations in the single-orbital Hubbard model on the decorated honeycomb lattice; including Dirac metals, flat-band ferromagnets, real-space Mott insulators, dimer and trimer Mott insulators, and a spin-$1$ Mott insulator. The rich phase diagram arises from structures within the unit cell. Hence, such states are absent on simpler lattices. We argue that such insulating phases are prevalent on decorated lattices. These are found in many materials and common in coordination polymers, providing a playground to explore this physics.
In a honeycomb lattice the symmetry has been broken by adding an ionic potential and a single-particle gap was generated in the spectrum. We have employed the iterative perturbation theory (IPT) in dynamical mean field approximation method to study the effects of competition between $U$ and $Δ$ on energy gap and renormalized Fermi velocity. We found, the competition between the single-particle gap parameter and the Hubbard potential closed the energy gap and restored the semi-metal phase, then the gap is opened again in Mott insulator phase. For a fixed $Δ$ by increasing $U$, the renormalized …
A theory is developed for the T=0 Mott-Hubbard insulating phases of the infinite-dimensional Hubbard model at half-filling, including both the antiferromagnetic (AF) and paramagnetic (P) insulators. Local moments are introduced explicitly from the outset, enabling ready identification of the dominant low energy scales for insulating spin- flip excitations. Dynamical coupling of single-particle processes to the spin-flip excitations leads to a renormalized self-consistent description of the single-particle propagators that is shown to be asymptotically exact in strong coupling, for both the AF …
We investigate the microscopic dynamics at the initial stage of photoinduced phase transitions in tetrathiafulvalene-$p$-chloranil by exact diagonalization. We first show that the one-dimensional extended Peierls-Hubbard model exhibits a neutral phase with small ionicity and negligible dimerization and an ionic phase with moderate ionicity and dimerization. Aside from these phases, we find a doubly ionized phase with strong dimerization that we call the "dipole" phase. These ground-state phases are characterized by various order parameters and the Zak phase, which is relevant to electronic pol…
Exact ground states, charge densities and excitation energies are found using valence bond methods for N-site modified Hubbard models with uniform spacing. At the neutral-ionic transition (NIT), the ground state has a symmetry crossover in 4n, 4n+2 rings with periodic and antiperiodic boundary conditions, respectively. The modified Hubbard model has a continuous NIT between a diamagnetic band insulator on the paired side and a paramagnetic Mott insulator on the covalent side. The singlet-triplet (ST), singlet-singlet (SS) and charge gaps for finite N indicate that the ST and SS gaps close at t…
We study the two-dimensional square lattice Hubbard model for small to moderate interaction strengths $1\leq U/t\leq 4$ by means of the ladder dual fermion approach. The non-local correlations beyond dynamical mean-field theory lower the potential energy, lead to a maximum in the uniform susceptibility and induce a pseudogap in the density of states. While the self-energy exhibits precursors of a possible insulating phase linked to the appearance of long-range fluctuations, the metallic phase persists within the accessible temperature range. Finite-size effects affect results qualitatively. Up…
Dynamics of ionic-to-neutral and neutral-to-ionic phase transitions induced by intrachain charge-transfer photoexcitations are studied in a quasi-one-dimensional extended Hubbard model with alternating potentials and an electron-lattice coupling for mixed-stack charge-transfer complexes. For interchain couplings, we use electron-electron interactions previously estimated for TTF-CA (TTF=tetrathiafulvalene, CA=chloranil). Photoexcitation is introduced by a pulse of oscillating electric field. The time-dependent Hartree-Fock approximation is used for the electronic part, and the classical approx…
To examine the insulating mechanism of 5$d$ transition metal oxide Sr$_2$IrO$_4$, we study the ground state properties of a three-orbital Hubbard model with a large relativistic spin-orbit coupling on a square lattice. Using a variational Monte Carlo method, we find that the insulating state appearing in the ground state phase diagram for one hole per site varies from a weakly correlated to a strongly correlated antiferromagnetic (AF) state with increasing Coulomb interactions. This crossover is characterized by the different energy gain mechanisms of the AF insulating state, i.e., from an int…
A detailed study of the one-dimensional ionic Hubbard model with interaction $U$ is presented. We focus on the band insulating (BI) phase and the spontaneously dimerized insulating (SDI) phase which appears on increasing $U$. By a recently introduced continuous unitary transformation [Krull et al.\ Phys. Rev. B {\bf 86}, 125113 (2012)] we are able to describe the system even close to the phase transition from BI to SDI although the bare perturbative series diverges before the transition is reached. First, the dispersion of single fermionic quasiparticles is determined in the full Brillouin zon…
By employing the exact-diagonalization method, we revisit the ground-state phase diagram of the Haldane-Hubbard model on the honeycomb lattice with staggered sublattice potentials. The phase diagram includes the band insulator, Mott insulator, and two Chern insulator phases with Chern numbers C=2 and C=1, respectively. The character of transitions between different phases is studied by analyzing the lower-lying energy levels, excitation gaps, structure factors, and fidelity metric. We find that the C=1 phase can be continuously deformed into the C=2 phase without a gap closure in the periodic …
We investigated the ionic Hubbard model with mass imbalance in one dimension, using the density matrix renormalization group method. This model exhibits a band insulator phase and an antiferromagnetic one, both with a finite spin gap. We found that this quantum phase transition is continuous, unalike the previous mean-field theory result. The von Neumann block entropy is maximum at the critical points, a fact that we used to build the phase diagram.
We present the first comprehensive broadband optical spectroscopy data on two insulating phases of vanadium dioxide (VO2): monoclinic M2 and triclinic. The main result of our work is that the energy gap and the electronic structure are essentially unaltered by the first-order structural phase transition between the M2 and triclinic phases. Moreover, the optical interband features in the M2 and triclinic phases are remarkably similar to those observed in the well-studied monoclinic M1 insulating phase of VO2. As the energy gap is insensitive to the different lattice structures of the three insu…
Ground state (GS) phase diagram of the one dimensional repulsive Hubbard model with both nearest neighbor ($t$) and next-nearest-neighbor ($t^{\prime}$) hopping and a staggered potential ($Δ$) is determined in the case of half-filled band and zero net magnetization within the mean-field theory. The model may be realized by cold atoms in engineered optical lattices. Connection between the peculiarities of the GS phase diagram of the interacting system and the topological Lifshitz transition in GS of free particle chain is discussed. The mean-field Hamiltonian is given by six order parameters, w…
Photoinduced dynamics of charge density and lattice displacements is calculated by solving the time-dependent Schrödinger equation for a one-dimensional extended Peierls-Hubbard model with alternating potentials for the mixed-stack organic charge-transfer complex, TTF-CA. A pulse of oscillating electric field is incorporated into the Peierls phase of the transfer integral. The frequency, the amplitude, and the duration of the pulse are varied to study the nonlinear and cooperative character of the photoinduced transition. When the dimerized ionic phase is photoexcited, the threshold behavior i…
We investigate the ground-state properties of the one-dimensional two-band Hubbard model with different bandwidths. The density-matrix renormalization group method is applied to calculate the averaged electron occupancies $n$ as a function of the chemical potential $μ$. Both at quarter and half fillings, "charge plateaux" appear in the $n$-$μ$ plot, where $dμ/dn$ diverges and the Mott insulating states are realized. To see how the orbital polarization in the one-quarter charge plateau develops, we apply the second-order perturbation theory from the strong-coupling limit at quarter filling. The…
We study the zero-temperature phase diagram of the half-filled one-dimensional ionic Hubbard model. This model is governed by the interplay of the on-site Coulomb repulsion and an alternating one-particle potential. Various many-body energy gaps, the charge-density-wave and bond-order parameters, the electric as well as the bond-order susceptibilities, and the density-density correlation function are calculated using the density-matrix renormalization group method. In order to obtain a comprehensive picture, we investigate systems with open as well as periodic boundary conditions and study the…
The ionic Hubbard model on a cubic lattice is investigated using analytical approximations and Wilson's renormalization group for the charge excitation spectrum. Near the Mott insulating regime, where the Hubbard repulsion starts to dominate all energies, the formation of correlated bands is described. The corresponding partial spectral weights and local densities of states show characteristic features, which compare well with a hybridized-band picture appropriate for the regime at small $U$, which at half-filling is known as a band insulator. In particular, a narrow charge gap is obtained at …
We study a one-dimensional SU(N) Hubbard model with an attractive on-site interaction and $N>2$ at half-filling on the bipartite lattice using density-matrix renormalization-group method and a perturbation theory. We find that the ground state of the SU(N) Hubbard model is a charge density wave state with two-fold degeneracy. All the excitations are found to be gapful, resulting in an insulating ground state, on contrary to that in the SU(2) case. Moreover, the charge gap is equal to the Cooperon gap, which behaves as $-2Nt^2/(N-1)U$ in the strong coupling regime. However, the spin gap $Δ_{s}$…
The dipole P(F) of systems with periodic boundary conditions (PBC) in a static electric field F is applied to one-dimensional Peierls-Hubbard models for organic charge-transfer (CT) salts. Exact results for P(F) are obtained for finite systems of N = 14 and 16 sites that are almost converged to infinite chains in deformable lattices subject to a Peierls transition. The electronic polarizability per site, α_{el} = (\partial P/\partial F)_0, of rigid stacks with alternating transfer integrals t(1 +/- δ) diverges at the neutral-ionic transition for δ= 0 but remains finite for δ> 0 in dimerized ch…
The Quantum Monte Carlo simulations of the ionic Hubbard model on a two-dimensional square lattice at half filling were performed. The method based on the direct-space, proposed by Suzuki and al., Hirsch and al., was used. Cycles of increasing and decreasing values of the Coulomb interaction $ U $ were performed for fixed temperature ($ kT=0.01 $). Results indicate that, at low temperature, the two insulator phases are separated by a metallic phase for weak to intermediate values of the staggered potential $ Δ$. For large Coulomb repulsion the system is in a Mott insulator with an antiferromag…
We study the dynamics of doublon in the half-filled Hubbard model on the triangular lattice by using the cellular dynamical mean field theory. Investigating the nearest-neighbor dynamical correlations, we demonstrate that a nearest-neighbor doublon-holon pair shows a strong attraction, in particular in the insulating phase. We also calculate the on-site dynamical correlation of doublon and find that the life time of doublon is longer in the metallic phase than in the insulating phase. In the long-time region, the metallic phase has persistent fluctuations in various nearest-neighbor configurat…
In our earlier work [M. Hafez, {\em et al.}, Phys. Lett. A {\bf 373} (2009) 4479] we employed the flow equation method to obtain a classic effective model from a quantum mechanical parent Hamiltonian called, the ionic Hubbard model (IHM). The classical ionic Hubbard model (CIHM) obtained in this way contains solely Fermionic occupation numbers of two species corresponding to particles with $\up$ and $\down$ spin, respectively. In this paper, we employ the transfer matrix method to analytically solve the CIHM at finite temperature in one dimension. In the limit of zero temperature, we find two …
The Mott insulating state of the Hubbard model at half-filling could be depicted as a spin liquid of singly occupied sites with holon-doublon quantum fluctuations localized in pairs. In one dimension the behavior is captured by a finite value of the charge parity string correlator, which fails to remain finite when generalized to higher dimensions. We recover a definition of parity brane correlator which may remain nonvanishing in presence of interchain coupling, by assigning an appropriate fractional phase to the parity breaking fluctuations. In case of Hubbard ladders at half-filling, we fin…
A repulsive Hubbard model with both spin-asymmetric hopping (${t_\uparrow\neq t_\downarrow}$) and a staggered potential (of strength $Δ$) is studied in one dimension. The model is a compound of the mass-imbalanced (${t_\uparrow\neq t_\downarrow}$, ${Δ=0}$) and ionic (${t_\uparrow = t_\downarrow}$, ${Δ>0}$) Hubbard models, and may be realized by cold atoms in engineered optical lattices. We use mostly mean-field theory to determine the phases and phase transitions in the ground state for a half-filled band (one particle per site). We find that a period-two modulation of the particle (or charge)…
We investigate the ground state phase diagram of the half-filled $t-t^{\prime}$ repulsive Hubbard model in the presence of a staggered ionic potential $Δ$, using the continuum-limit bosonization approach. We find, that with increasing on-site-repulsion $U$, depending on the value of the next-nearest-hopping amplitude $t^{\prime}$, the model shows three different versions of the ground state phase diagram. For $t^{\prime} < t^{\prime}_{\ast}$, the ground state phase diagram consists of the following three insulating phases: Band-Insulator at $U<U_{c}$, Ferroelectric Insulator at $U_{c} < U < U_…
An exotic phase, the bond order wave, characterized by the spontaneous dimerization of the hopping, has been predicted to exist sandwiched between the band and Mott insulators in systems described by the ionic Hubbard model. Despite growing theoretical evidences, this phase still evades experimental detection. Given the recent realization of the ionic Hubbard model in ultracold atomic gases, we propose here to detect the bond order wave using superlattice modulation spectroscopy. We demonstrate, with the help of time-dependent density-matrix renormalization group and bosonization, that this sp…
We investigate the momentum distribution function near the Mott-Hubbard transition in the one-dimensional t1-t2 Hubbard model (the zig-zag Hubbard chain), with the density-matrix renormalization-group technique. We show that for strong interactions the Mott-Hubbard transition occurs between the metallic-phase and an insulating dimerized phase with incommensurate spin excitations, suggesting a decoupling of magnetic and charge excitations not present in weak coupling. We illustrate the signatures for the Mott-Hubbard transition and the commensurate-incommensurate transition in the insulating sp…