Hund's coupling-assisted ferromagnetic percolation transition in a multiorbital flat band (2011.10554v4)

Abstract: By connecting Hund's physics with flat band physics, we establish an exact result for studying ferromagnetism in a multiorbital system. We consider a two-layer model consisting of a $p_x$, $p_y$-orbital honeycomb lattice layer and an $f$-orbital triangular lattice layer with sites aligned with the centers of the honeycomb plaquettes. The system features a flat band that admits a percolation representation for an appropriate chemical potential difference between the two layers. In this representation, the ground state space is spanned by maximum-spin clusters of localized single-particle states, and averaging over the ground states yields a correlated percolation problem with weights due to the spin degeneracy of the clusters. A paramagnetic-ferromagnetic transition occurs as the band approaches half filling and the ground states become dominated by states with a large maximum-spin cluster, as shown by Monte Carlo simulation.