Nano-pattern induced ferromagnetism in strongly correlated electrons

Abstract

Band ferromagnetism in strongly correlated electron systems is one of the most challenging issue in today's condensed-matter physics. In this theoretical work, we study the competition between kinetic term, Coulomb repulsion, and on-site correlated disorder for various lattice geometries. Unconventional and complex ferromagnetic phase diagrams are obtained: wide region of stability, cascade of transitions, re-entrance, high sensitivity to the carrier concentration and strongly inhomogeneous ground states for relatively weak on-site potential. The direct and systematic comparison with Exact Diagonalization shows that the Unrestricted Hartree-Fock method is unexpectedly accurate for such systems, which allows large size cluster calculations. A match of the order of 99.9% for weak and intermediate couplings is found, slightly reduced to about 95% in the large repulsion regime. Nano-patterned lattices appear to be particularly promising candidates that could, with the tremendous progress in growing and self-organized techniques, be synthesized in a near future.