558 Ch.

10 The Correlated Metallic State

state of the long-range hopping term, is a rather curious object (see

Problem 10.6).
Somewhat miraculously, it turns out that the fully Gutzwiller-proje-
cted Fermi sea is the exact ground state of the large-U effective Hamil-
tonian which is now the l / r 2 Heisenberg chain [149, 3581

3t= c
j,m= 1
4t2
-sj *
d$,, U
s, . (10.47)

Thus the Gutzwiller wave function is exact at U = 0, and also at

U + 00, but nowhere in between. In accordance with our previous
discussion, the Gutzwiller treatment predicts that the Mott transition
is taking place at U = 00. The best that can be said about I@G)
is that it gives an acceptable approximation for U < W . What we
wish for is a description of the insulating (U > W ) state at the same
level of accuracy. This is achieved [96] by constructing Baeriswyl states
which is now a practicable proposition, thanks to the exact knowledge of
lU,=,) = JQ'c(q= 0)). It turns out that the Gutzwiller and Baeriswyl
wave functions are complementary: the former can be used in the metal-
lic region, while the latter for the Mott insulator. Improvements of the
Gutzwiller trial state give a kind of a small-U expansion, while system-
atic improvements of the Baeriswyl trial state are similar to a large-U
expansion. The Mott transition occurs between two states whose char-
acter is completely different and neither of them can be meaningfully
continued into the range of validity of the other.
Fig. 10.8 shows results for the density of doubly occupied sites n d
(in the figure, the notation is d ) . For U / W < 1 the Gutzwiller, while for
U / W > 1 the Baeriswyl estimate is used. The approximate variational
result would be that the Mott transition is a first-order one, since n d
has a jump at U/W = 1. But according to the exact solution, the Mott
transition is continuous, with n d behaving perfectly smoothly across the
transition. Subsequent refinements of the Gutzwiller, and Baeriswyl,
states could reduce the discontinuity but would not eliminate it. Note
that the figure also shows the result (9.47) which was obtained in the
Gutzwiller approximation.