430 Ch.

8 Ferromagnetism in Hubbard Models

&

Figure 8.4: The tight binding density of states of the kagome lattice( E in units of
It-). Observe the &function peak at e = -2, which belongs to the flat band at the
bottom of the spectrum.

spins parallel for any U > 0. Later on, we will understand that it is
no accident that frustration and ferromagnetism appear in the same
system.

8.2.3 Nagaoka Ferromagnetism

We have already mentioned that ferromagnetic ordering may be driven
by kinetic energy and that for the square lattice or the simple cubic
lattice, this is the only possibility we can think of. To see how this

-
might work, Nagaoka [302] studied the limit U = 0;) where the antifer-
romagnetic kinetic exhange t 2 / U is suppressed. At exact half-filling
N = L , the charge degrees of freedom are completely frozen. Removing
a single electron, the resulting hole” moves on a background of spins.
It turns out that under very general conditions, the “smoothness” of a
completely spin-polarized background is optimal for the propagation of
the hole, thus kinetic energy favours ferromagnetism. This is stated in
~

l 1 “Holes” and “particles” are understood here as deviations from half-filling. In

semiconductor physics, these expressions have a different meaning. - We prefer to
state the theorem for a single hole, rather than for a single electron, which would be
also usual. For bipartite lattices, electron-hole symmetry guarantess that the two
cases are equivalent. For non-bipartite lattices, the single-hole and single-electron
cases will have to be discussed separately.