Hofstadter butterfly for a finite correlated system

Abstract

We investigate a finite two-dimensional system in the presence of external magnetic field. We discuss how the energy spectrum depends on the system size, boundary conditions and Coulomb repulsion. On one hand, using these results we present the field dependence of the transport properties of a nanosystem. In particular, we demonstrate that these properties depend on whether the system consists of even or odd number of sites. On the other hand, on the basis of exact results obtained for a finite system we investigate whether the Hofstadter butterfly is robust against strong electronic correlations. We show that for sufficiently strong Coulomb repulsion the Hubbard gap decreases when the magnetic field increases.