384 Ch.

7 Itinerant Electron Magnetism

-
ceptibility diverges (the system is at the critical point). At large U ,the
system is clearly a Mott insulator: the gap is U ,and the spin quasi-
long-range order is the same as for the equivalent S = 1/2 Heisenberg
model.
The situation is quite different away from half-filling, inasmuch as
the existence of magnetic long-range order is more doubtful. The one-
dimensional Hubbard model is known not to order at all31, so let us take
the example of the square lattice. Keeping only the ferromagnetic, and
two-sublattice antiferromagnetic, types of order, the mean field phase
diagram [166] is rather like Fig. 4.11. Allowing fancier ordering pat-
terns, rich Hartree-Fock phase diagrams are obtained [179, 3531. But
are ail these phases real? The square lattice is simple enough to allow
trying to check the predicted phase diagram by comparing to numeri-
cal results obtained for finite systems. The result was rather shocking:
Hirsch [166] felt compelled to conjecture that any ordering away from
half-filling is merely an artefact of the mean field approximation. But
remember that though the numerical results gave sufficient reason to
question the mean-field results, the counter-suggestion was not a rig-
orous statement either! Here we do not wish to discuss the difficult
problem whether the square lattice Hubbard model has any kind of
order (and particularly, whether it is superconducting) away from half-
filling. Let us rather soften the criticism of mean field approaches by two
general remarks. First, even if it turns out that a predicted phase is not
realized at all, the Hartree-Fock studies are not a waste of effort. One
can always argue that the hypothetical long-range order is replaced by
a well-developed short-range order of much the same kind. Second, the
remarkable fragility of magnetic order in the Hubbard model (which we
are going to discuss at length in Ch. 8) may be due to the fact that the
model contains only on-site interaction. An honest mean field should
arise from the neighbours! We surmise that augmenting the Hubbard
model with intersite interactions would not only take us nearer to physi-
cal reality, but would at the same time make the behaviour of the model

31 We find a ferromagnetic phase in the ground state phase diagram of a generalized

Hubbard chain with first- and second neighbour hoppings (see Ch. 8). For a quite
different parameter regime, it may also show dimer order. It remains true that it
does not show magnetic order with q # 0.