10.

6 Discussion and Outlook 549

we have done better by introducing a more complicated trial state? Can

we get a meaningful description of the insulating state? And what about
magnetic long-range order?
We do not raise here the even more fundamental question whether
the (non-degenerate) Hubbard model is good enough. In the previ-
ous chapters, we had ample opportunity to convince ourselves that or-
bital degeneracy, and the extra terms included in the extended Hubbard
model, can be important. However, the simplest Hubbard model should
suffice for the discussion of the metal-insulator transition.

10.6.1 Gutzwiller Method: Exact Treatment

For decades, working with the Gutzwiller Ansatz involved approxima-
tions of unknown quality (such as the Gutzwiller approximation), or
numerical evaluation for finite systems, or series expansions of limited
range of validity. Since one of the main objectives was to describe such
a subtle phenomenon as the metal-insulator transition, which (if it hap-
pens at all) is certain to be associated with non-analytic behaviour at
some intermediate value of U ,the lack of secure knowledge was most
worrying. The matter was finally settled when Vollhardt and cowork-
ers [271]devised a method for carrying out the Gutzwiller variational
procedure exactly, for arbitrary interaction strength, and lattice dimen-
sionality. Unfortunately, the solution is far too lengthy and complicated
to be included here; we have to content ourselves with quoting some of
the essential results.
Though the scheme works for any dimension, closed-form results can
be obtained only for D = 1, and D = 00. It turns out, however, that the
character of the results is the same for all finite D. Thus it is enough
to cite the D = 1 results to get an impression of the behaviour in finite
dimensions.
The first step is to express the expectation values in terms of the
variational parameter q; the second is to determine the optimum value
of q. It is interesting that at half-filling (n= 1) the discontinuity of the
band state occupation number nk,, is

(10.30)