Coulomb repulsion versus Hubbard repulsion in a disordered chain

Abstract:

We study the difference between on site Hubbard and long range Coulomb repulsions for two interacting particles in a disordered chain. The system size L (in units of the lattice spacing) is of the order of the one particle localization length and the energies are taken near the band center. In the two cases, the limits of weak and strong interactions are characterized by uncorrelated energy levels and are separated by a crossover regime where the states are more extended and the spectra more rigid. U denoting the interaction strength and t the kinetic energy scale, the crossovers take place for interaction energy to kinetic energy ratios U/t and U/(2tL) of order one, for Hubbard and Coulomb repulsions respectively. While Hubbard repulsion can only yield weak critical chaos with intermediate spectral statistics, Coulomb repulsion can drive the two particle system to quantum chaos with Wigner-Dyson spectral statistics. The interaction matrix elements are studied to explain this difference.