Phase stability, charge ordering, and charge-liquid formation in the Falicov-Kimball model on triangular and kagome lattices
We present a systematic investigation of the stability of the phase diagram of the spinless Falicov-Kimball model on two-dimensional non-bipartite lattices, the triangular and kagome lattices, using Markov-chain Monte Carlo simulations. Three filling or chemical potential conditions are examined: fixed chemical potentials ($\mu_f = \mu_c = U/2$), "generalized" half-filling ($\bar{n}_f = 1/3$, $\bar{n}_c = 2/3$), and conventional half-filling ($\bar{n}_f = \bar{n}_c = 1/2$). For each condition, the effects of a perturbatively small next-nearest-neighbor hopping are studied. On the triangular lattice, Anderson insulator, Mott insulator, and charge-density wave (CDW) phases are found in all cases, with the CDW driven by Coulomb-interaction-mediated nesting. Evidence for a charge-liquid regime is found in the region between the weakly correlated regime and the CDW, characterized by competing charge-ordering wavevectors and the absence of universal scaling behavior, whose extent shrinks progressively from the grand-canonical to the conventional half-filling condition. On the kagome lattice, the CDW phase is completely absent; instead, an insulating ground state, plausibly of the Mott type, is found, with signatures of a possible quantum phase transition at zero temperature. Our results establish the crucial role of lattice geometry and particle-hole symmetry breaking in shaping the phase diagram of correlated electron systems.