158 Ch.

4 Mott Transition and Hubbard Model

Here c!u creates an electron in the Wannier state #(r - Rj) with spin 0,
j being a lattice site index. iiju = cjucju
t is the corresponding occupation
number operator (the “hat” serves to distinguish it from its expectation
value nju = (iijg). For other operators, where the danger of mixing
them up with expectation values is less immediate, we do not bother to
write hats.)
The operators satisfy the anticommutation relations

The sum over the nearest neighbour pairs (j,l) describes the kinetic
energy (hopping) of electrons

%band = -t + CluCju)-
~(c]n% t (4.13)
(.ill)

The atomic level about which the tight-binding band is centered is usu-
ally chosen as the energy zero.
The interaction term

(4.14)

describes the Coulomb repulsion between electrons sharing the same

orbital, with the Hubbard U defined analogously to (4.3)

(4.15)

This definition makes it obvious that we are speaking about the

positive-U Hubbard model. We mention that in the literature, one dis-
cusses also the negative47 Hubbard model. Though at the first sight
it looks physically unmotivated, the case U < 0 arises in two different
contexts. The first may be regarded as purely formal: there is a canon-
ical transformation which connects 17> 0 and U < 0 Hamiltonians (see
[244] and Problem 4.6). The second possibility is that you regard the
negative4 Hubbard model as an effective Hamiltonian (similar to the