Eur. Phys. J. B 33, 419-438 (2003)
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjb/e2003-00183-6

Charge density waves and bond order waves in a quarter filled extended Hubbard ladder

¹ Laboratoire de Physique Théorique de l'École Normale Supérieure (CNRS-UMR8549) , 24, rue Lhomond, 75231 Paris Cedex 05, France
² Dipartimento di Fisica “E.R. Caianiello” and Unità INFM di Salerno, Università di Salerno, Via S. Allende, 84081 Baronissi (Sa), Italy

Corresponding author: ^a orignac@lpt.ens.fr

Received: 13 February 2003
Revised: 15 May 2003
Published online: 3 July 2003

Abstract

We investigate the phase diagram of a quarter filled Hubbard ladder with nearest-neighbor Coulomb repulsion using bosonization and renormalization group approach. Focusing on the strong-repulsion regime, we discuss the effect of an interchain exchange interaction and interchain repulsion on the possible ground states of the system and charge order configurations. Since the spin excitations always possess a gap, we find competing bond-order wave and charge density wave phases as possible ground states of the ladder model. We discuss the elementary excitations in these various phases and point an analogy between the excitations on some of these phases and those of a Kondo-Heisenberg insulator. We also study the order of the quantum phase transitions between the different ground states of the system. We obtain second order transitions in the Ising or universality class or first order transitions. We map the complete phase diagram in the plane by integrating perturbative renormalization-group equations. Finally, we discuss the effect of doping away from half-filling and the effect of an applied magnetic field.