Hubbard Hamiltonian into Heisenberg Antiferromagnet; using creation operators

The adequate argument below can be improved. Nevertheless it illustrates the flow of such
arguments. For simplicity, in the Hubbard Hamiltonian set the energy of singly-filled orbital to
zero and that of the doubly filled orbital to U . Consider perturbation theory in the hopping term
between two sites 1 & 2 (say). The hopping Hamiltonian for this case is −t s (c+ +
P
1s c2s + c2s c1s ).
We “integrate” out over any double occupied sites reached by second-order perturbation theory.
The overall coefficient is t2 /(−U ), a factor omitted in the next few steps.
The general form of the operators resulting from perturbation theory is:
X +
(c1s c2s + c+
X +
2s c1s ) (c1s0 c2s0 + c+
2s0 c1s0 ).
s s0

We will consider both cases: s0 = s and s0 = −s.

s0 = s Writing out the terms we have s (c+ + + +

P
1s c2s c2s c1s + c2s c1s c1s c2s ). Then using the fact
+ +
that c2s c2s = 1 − n2s and c1s c1s = 1 − n2s we have
X X X
[n1s (1 − n2s ) + n2s (1 − n1s )] = (n1s + n2s ) − 2 n1s n2s
s s s
=(n1 + n2 ) − [(n1↑ + n1↓ )(n2↑ + n2↓ ) + (n1↑ − n1↓ )(n2↑ − n2↓ )]
=n1 + n2 − n1 n2 − 4S1z S2z .

s0 = −s Writing out the terms explicitly we have 2(c+ + +d +

1↑ c2↑ + c2↑ c1↑ )(c1↓ c2↓ + c2↓ c1↑ ).
d

Consider the product of the two “hatted” terms. This shifts two electrons from site 2 to site 1 and
hence cannot contribute to the groundstate (forget anything you know about superconductivity!).
Likewise the product of “underlined” terms does the reverse. Neglecting these we have (note that
S1+ = c+ +
1↑ c1↓ = −c1↓ c1↑ )

+ − − +
2(c+ + + +
1↑ c2↑ c2↓ c1↓ + c2↑ c1↑ c1↓ c2↓ ) = −2(S1 S2 + S1 S2 )
= −4(S1x S2x + S1y S2y ).

Combining the results (including the overall coefficient −t2 /U ) we have the effective Hamilto-
nian
−t2 4t2 ~ ~
Hef f = (n1 + n2 − n1 n2 ) + S 1 · S2 .
U U

Specializing to the half-filled case (and we have been too sloppy to do anything else) for which
n1 = n2 = 1, the effective Hamiltonian is

t2 ~1 · S
~2
Hef f = − + JS
U
where the antiferromagnetic exchange constant J = 4t2 /U . Taking the mean-field average of the
~1 · S
second term (hS ~ 2 i = − 1 ) we recover the result in class, namely, a shift of −2t2 /U . Of course,
4
going beyond mean-field theory could lead us into a discussion of the nature of the antiferromagnetic
ground state and of the effect of spin waves on the expectation value of the local spin. Here, we
demonstrate that the ground state of the half-filled Hubbard model is always an antiferromagnet.