4.

7 Hubbard Subbands 179

++ Eat I- 2zt

Figure 4.8: Schematic representationof the origin of the Hubbard subbands. The
hopping of an t-spin electron on the background of $-spin electrons gives rise to a
+
band of width 2zt centered on eat U . Similarly, the motion of a &hole leads to
N

the appearance of the lower subband.

than U ,if we add an electron (or a hole) to the system, the energy
levels of the quasiparticle belong to one of the well-separated Hubbard
subbands, whose widths are of the order of zt. The essential change with
respect to our naive result is that the two-subband-picture can be used
for electrons with arbitrary spins, including a paramagnetic mixture of
?-spin and $-spin electrons.
Though at the first sight, the two subbands may look like the va-
lence and conduction band of a semiconductor, we must repeat the
warning given about the level scheme in Fig. 4.6: this is an essentially
occupation-number dependent band structure. The very existence of
the upper Hubbard subband depends on the presence of electrons in
the lower Hubbard subband. The difference from the usual semicon-
ductor band structure becomes clearer if we recall that an “ordinary”
band can hold up to 2L electrons, while the lower Hubbard subband
cannot contain more than L electrons (for more than L electrons, some
of the sites must be doubly occupied which is associated with an energy
U , so the occupation of the upper Hubbard subband has in fact begun).
Similarly, the upper Hubbard subband has place only for not more than
L electrons. This does not arise from a reduction of the k-space domain:
the subbands have the same set of k-vectors as the original one-electron
band in the U = 0 limit. The splitting into two Hubbard subbands