Solutions to the Problems 59 1

Expanding to first order in U , (10.92) coincides with the Hartree-Fock (or

RPA) result xs = x p . (1 - U p ( e ~ ) ) - ' (see (7.23)). However, the agreement
ceases to hold at higher values of U . The Hartree-Fock instability against
ferromagnetism at U = W is now seen to be spurious, and it is replaced by
the Brinkman-Rice transition at U = 2W. It is a general lesson that taking
correlation effects into account shows that long range order is less likely to
occur than mean field theories would make us believe.
The calculation of the third-order susceptibility proceeds similarly, only we
have to expand E to fourth order in m, and m to third order in H . Omitting
the details, one arrives at

(10.94)

which confirms (10.18). (the result differs in some details from those in [431]
and [231],which were derived using a semicircular density of states). The mag-
netization curve deviates upwards from linearity. We can understand this by
referring to (10.91): the field diminishes the concentration of the nonmagnetic
d sites, and therefore at higher fields the system is more polarizable.
Problem 10.2 We proceed as with Problem 10.1, only now we cannot use
expansion in powers of m, or H . Minimizing the rn-dependent part of (10.89)
with respect to m, we get

H ( l - 2nd)
(10.95)
m= JV
which we replace back in (10.89), and seek the minimum with respect to nd
numerically. Typical results are shown in the upper half of Fig. 10.19. The
essential observation is that, for large enough U , and at high enough fields,
the energy plotted against n d (called d in the figure) has two minima: one at
a finite nd (which evolved smoothly from the low-field regime), and another
at n d = 0. At some critical field, the absolute minimum switches from the
finite-n,j solution to the n d = 0 solution. The optimum values of nd and the
magnetization (bottom left and right plots in the figure) were found by tracing
the field dependence of the absolute minimum. At the field where the two
minima become degenerate, a first-order metal-insulator transition is taking
place. At the same time, there is also a sharp metamagnetic transition, with
the magnetization jumping to its saturation value.
Our considerations were based on the assumption of spatially uniform
ground states. In cases where a first-order transition can take place, attention
has to be paid to the possibility of heterogeneous solutions (phase segregation).
We refer to [231] for further details.