On Quantum Phase Transition. II. The Falicov–Kimball Model

Abstract

The Falicov–Kimball (FK) model(1) involves two types of interacting particles: first the itinerant spinless electrons are quantum particles, secondly the static ions are classical particles. It is striking to see that, despite the simplicity of its hamiltonian, the phase diagram of the FK model is highly sophisticated, moreover it remains in great part conjectural. An antiferromagnetic phase transition was proven for the FK model on a square lattice in the seminal paper of T. Kennedy and E. Lieb.(2) This result was extended by Lebowitz and Macris(3) to “small magnetic field.” Then the same result was obtained by using a new method.(4) The main results of this paper concerns the two dimensional FK model on a square lattice, for which we apply the general results contained in ref. 5. First there exists an effective hamiltonian which is a long range many body Ising model, and which governs the behaviour of the ions. Secondly we compute explicitly the truncated effective hamiltonian up to the fourth order w.r.t. a small parameter (the inverse of the on site energy). Finally we use the classical Pirogov–Sinai theory, to get the hierarchy of the phase diagrams up to the fourth order. More precisely, we show that, when the chemical potential varies, the FK model exhibits, at low temperature, a sequence of phase transitions: first between phases of period two, then of period three, then of period four, and finally of period five. In each case the completeness of the phase diagram is proved. This paper supports the conjecture that the phase diagram of the FK model contains periodic phases outside of a Cantor set.