Low-temperature properties of the Hubbard model on highly frustrated one-dimensional lattices

Abstract

We consider the repulsive Hubbard model on three highly frustrated one-dimensional lattices---sawtooth chain and two kagom\'e chains---with completely dispersionless (flat) lowest single-electron bands. We construct the complete manifold of exact many-electron ground states at low electron fillings and calculate the degeneracy of these states. As a result, we obtain closed-form expressions for low-temperature thermodynamic quantities around a particular value of the chemical potential ${\ensuremath{\mu}}_{0}$. We discuss specific features of thermodynamic quantities of these ground-state ensembles such as residual entropy, an extra low-temperature peak in the specific heat, and the existence of ferromagnetism and paramagnetism. We confirm our analytical results by comparison with exact-diagonalization data for finite systems.