Ground state of the strong-coupling Hubbard Hamiltonian: A numerical diagonalization study

We exactly diagonalize the effective Hamiltonian obtained from the Hubbard model in the strong-coupling limit for a two-dimensional √10×√10 size square lattice. The effective Hamiltonian operates on a restricted Hilbert space containing only states with singly occupied sites, which makes the diagonalization possible within reasonable computational time for the above lattice. The ground-state energy and wave function are obtained for several values of the coupling ratio t/U and the doping fraction x. We find three different phases in the (x,t/U) phase diagram. The first is characterized by antiferromagnetic order which extends to the longest possible distance in the 10-site system. The second and third phases are characterized by antiferromagnetic and ferromagnetic short-range correlations, respectively. We comment on the possible relevance of the results to the recently discovered high-temperature copper-oxide superconductors.