9.

2 The Variational Ground State 509

Proceeding analogously to (9.20-9.22), IFS) defined in (9.18) can be

expanded in terms of the localized basis (9.23) as

Recalling the Hubbard model, we realize that the doubly occupied

sites must be playing a significant role because each of them “costs”
an on-site Coulomb energy U. Thus an important characteristic of the
localized basis state in (9.23) is the number of common elements of the
{g?j2}-, and {h,N/2 }-sets, i.e., the number of doubly occupied sites

(9.25)
For the snapshots Fig. 9.l.a, c, and b, Nd = 4, 0, and 2, respectively.
The Gutzwiller expansion (9.24) of the non-interacting Fermi sea
JFS)encompasses all possible real-space distributions of the electrons,
with Nd rangingg from 0 to N/2. There are configurations which you
would rightly consider as highly implausible: for instance, when all
electrons are crammed into one end of the crystal, where all sites are
doubly occupied, while the rest of the lattice remains empty. Such
configurations are, however, necessarily present in the exact expansion
(9.24); the fact that they are indeed very improbable must be a property
of the determinant factors figuring in that equation.
The determinant factors in (9.24) can be considered as the coherence
factors of the Fermi sea. By “coherence” we usually mean a property of
an ordered state; that is not the case here. The uncorrelated Fermi sea
IFS) is the clearest example of a non-ordered ground state. Still, it has
‘Here we consider only N 5 L. For N > L, N d could not be less than N - L.