Analytic calculation of ground-state properties of correlated fermions with the Gutzwiller wave function

Abstract

A new analytic approach to the evaluation of ground-state properties of Hubbard-type models in terms of the Gutzwiller variational wave function is presented. It is based on the observation that expectation values in terms of this wave function may be expressed by sums over different lattice sites. This makes the application of Wick’s theorem and the resulting contractions extremely simple, since the latter involve only anticommuting numbers as in a Grassmann algebra. Expressions for the momentum distribution $n_{\mathrm{k}\sigma }$ and the Hubbard interaction in terms of a power series in a particular correlation parameter are derived which are valid for all dimensions. An explicit diagrammatic evaluation of the coefficients is described. In one dimension these coefficients may be determined to all orders which yields an approximation-free calculation of $n_{\mathrm{k}}$ and ground-state energy E for arbitrary density n and interaction strength U. In the case of a half-filled band and large U, hitherto unexpected nonanalyticities are found. The results allow for the first approximation-free assessment of the properties of the Gutzwiller wave function. It is shown that the well-known Gutzwiller approximation may be derived diagrammatically, too. The approximation is seen to yield the exact results for expectation values in terms of this wave function in the limit of infinite dimensionality.