Peierls instability for the Holstein model

Abstract

We consider the static Holstein model, describing a chain of Fermions interacting with a classical phonon field, when the interaction is weak and the density is a rational number. We show that the energy of the system, as a function of the phonon field, has two stationary points, defined up to a lattice translation, which are local minima in the space of fields periodic with period equal to the inverse of the density.