Magnetic properties at various fillings of the quasiflat band in a fermionic two-leg ladder model

Abstract: A recent study has demonstrated that a fermionic two-leg ladder model, threaded by a flux and characterized by a spatially varying interleg hopping term, gives rise to a quasiflat low-energy band. This band exhibits an unusual ground state at half filling in the presence of interaction -- a ferromagnetic Mott insulator. In this paper, we extend the study of this model to other fillings of the quasiflat band and explore the magnetic properties of the ground state at these fillings. In particular, we study four fillings: one-quarter, three-quarters, slightly above half filling (half filling plus two electrons), and slightly below half-filling (half filling minus two electrons). Incorporating interaction within the Hubbard model and using the Density Matrix Renormalization Group method to find the ground states, we find that the spin-spin correlation is ferromagnetic at fillings less than half, similar to that observed at half filling, but is antiferromagnetic beyond half filling. Interestingly, these results hold only when mixing between the lowest quasiflat band and the next-to-lowest dispersive band is negligible; once mixing between the two bands is facilitated by increasing the interaction strength, the correlation becomes ferromagnetic above half filling as well. Additionally, by reducing the strength of the interaction in comparison to the bandwidth, a transition from the ferromagnetic to the antiferromagnetic state is observed in all the cases.