A two-orbital model for Fe-pnictide superconductors is investigated using computational techniques on two-dimensional square clusters. The hopping amplitudes are derived from orbital overlap integrals, or by band structure fits, and the spin frustrat
ing effect of the plaquette-diagonal Fe-Fe hopping is remarked. A spin striped state is stable in a broad range of couplings in the undoped regime, in agreement with neutron scattering. Adding two electrons to the undoped ground state of a small cluster, the dominant pairing operators are found. Depending on parameters, two pairing operators were identified: they involve inter-xz-yz orbital combinations forming spin singlets or triplets, transforming according to the B_2g and A_2g representations of the D_4h group, respectively.
The magnetic phase diagram of the quarter-filled generalized Wigner lattice with nearest- and next-nearest-neighbor hopping t_1 and t_2 is explored. We find a region at negative t_2 with fully saturated ferromagnetic ground states that we attribute t
o kinetic exchange. Such interaction disfavors antiferromagnetism at t_2 <0 and stems from virtual excitations across the charge gap of the Wigner lattice, which is much smaller than the Mott-Hubbard gap proportional to U. Remarkably, we find a strong dependence of the charge structure factor on magnetism even in the limit U to infinity, in contrast to the expectation that charge ordering in the Wigner lattice regime should be well described by spinless fermions. Our results, obtained using the density-matrix renormalization group and exact diagonalization, can be transparently explained by means of an effective low-energy Hamiltonian.
We investigate the spectral properties of a hole moving in a two-dimensional Hubbard model for strongly correlated t_2g electrons. Although superexchange interactions are Ising-like, a quasi-one-dimensional coherent hole motion arises due to effectiv
e three-site terms. This mechanism is fundamentally different from the hole motion via quantum fluctuations in the conventional spin model with SU(2) symmetry. The orbital model describes also propagation of a hole in some e_g compounds, and we argue that orbital degeneracy alone does not lead to hole self-localization.
