Lowest energy states of an $O(N)$ fermionic chain

A quite general finite-size chain of fermions with $N$ internal degrees of freedom (flavors) and $O(N)$ symmetry is considered. In the case of the free boundary condition, we prove that the ground state in the invariant sector having exactly $m$ flavors with an odd particle number is represented by a single rank-$m$ antisymmetric multiplet. For the even-length chains, its particle-hole quantum number (if it's a good one) is given by the parity of the $m$. For the odd-length chains, the particle-hole symmetry leads to the twofold degeneracy among the conjugate multiplets. Similar statements are proven for the $O(N)$ mixed-spin chains in antisymmetric representations. The results are extended to the long-range interacting fermions and (partially) to the translation invariant chains.