Finite size effects for the gap in the excitation spectrum of the one-dimensional Hubbard model

M. Colomé-Tatché 1, S. I. Matveenko 1, 2, G. V. Shlyapnikov 1, 3

Physical Review A: Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics 81 (2010) 013611

We study finite size effects for the gap of the quasiparticle excitation spectrum in the weakly interacting regime one-dimensional Hubbard model with on-site attraction. Two type of corrections to the result of the thermodynamic limit are obtained. Aside from a power law (conformal) correction due to gapless excitations which behaves as $1/N_a$, where $N_a$ is the number of lattice sites, we obtain corrections related to the existence of gapped excitations. First of all, there is an exponential correction which in the weakly interacting regime ($|U|\ll t$) behaves as $\sim \exp (-N_a \Delta_{\infty}/4 t)$ in the extreme limit of $N_a \Delta_{\infty} /t \gg 1$, where $t$ is the hopping amplitude, $U$ is the on-site energy, and $\Delta_{\infty}$ is the gap in the thermodynamic limit. Second, in a finite size system a spin-flip producing unpaired fermions leads to the appearance of solitons with non-zero momenta, which provides an extra (non-exponential) contribution $\delta$. For moderate but still large values of $N_a\Delta_{\infty} /t$, these corrections significantly increase and may become comparable with the $1/N_a$ conformal correction. Moreover, in the case of weak interactions where $\Delta_{\infty}\ll t$, the exponential correction exceeds higher order power law corrections in a wide range of parameters, namely for $N_a\lesssim (8t/\Delta_{\infty})\ln(4t/|U|)$, and so does $\delta$ even in a wider range of $N_a$. For sufficiently small number of particles, which can be of the order of thousands in the weakly interacting regime, the gap is fully dominated by finite size effects.

  • 1. Laboratoire de Physique Théorique et Modèles Statistiques (LPTMS),
    CNRS : UMR8626 – Université Paris XI – Paris Sud
  • 2. L.D. Landau Institute for Theoretical Physics,
    Landau Institute for Theoretical Physics
  • 3. Van der Waals-Zeeman Institute,
    University of Amsterdam
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