Effective momentum-momentum coupling in a correlated electronic system

Abstract

We present a way of partly reincorporate the effects of the localized bonding electrons on the dynamics of their itinerant counterparts in Hubbard-like Hamiltonians. This is done by relaxing the constraint that the former should be entirely frozen in the chemical bonds between the underlying lattice sites through the employment of a Born-Oppenheimer-like ansatz for the wavefunction of the whole electronic system. Accordingly, the latter includes itinerant as well as bonding electron coordinates. Going beyond the adiabatic approximation, we show that the net effect of virtual transitions of bonding electrons between their ground and excited states is to furnish the itinerant electrons with an effective inter-electronic momentum-momentum interaction. Although we have applied these ideas to the specific case of rings, our assumptions can be generalized to higher dimensional systems sharing the required properties of which we have made use herein.