English

Instability of Nagaoka State and Quantum Phase Transition via Kinetic Frustration Control

Strongly Correlated Electrons 2026-04-30 v3

Abstract

We investigate the Nagaoka-Thouless (NT) ferromagnetic instability in the strongly interacting tt-tt' Hubbard model by continuously breaking particle-hole symmetry on a tunable square-triangular lattice geometry. We use an analytic approach to show that the fully spin-polarized state becomes unstable to a metastable spin-polaron when the kinetic frustration t/tt'/t exceeds a critical, dimension-dependent value. Large-scale density matrix renormalization group simulations reveal a quantum phase transition from the NT ferromagnet to a spiral spin-density wave, which evolves continuously into the Haerter-Shastry antiferromagnet in the large-frustration limit. Remarkably, this transition remains robust at low but finite hole density, making it accessible in cold-atom and moir\'e Hubbard platforms under strong interactions. A variational analysis further captures the instability mechanism at finite density via frustration-induced magnon band deformation.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2508.08410,
  title  = {Instability of Nagaoka State and Quantum Phase Transition via Kinetic Frustration Control},
  author = {Prakash Sharma and Yang Peng and Donna N. Sheng and Hitesh J. Changlani and Yao Wang},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2508.08410},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

13 pages, 8 figures