7.

1 Introduction 343

U / t , and in a narrower range of band filling, than it had been thought.

It does not look like a recipe for the exceptionally robust kind of order
we observe in iron. Thus we have to conclude that the seemingly sim-
plest kind of magnetic order: ferromagnetism, is not a generic Hubbard
phenomenon.
Seeing a difficulty here may look perplexing because it is known that
advanced electronic structure calculations (density functional theories)
provide a detailed, and often quite accurate, description of the ferromag-
netic transition metals [15, 141, 1451. What more should we wish for?
The point is that we would like to understand magnetism as the corre-
lated behaviour of interacting electrons and (as we are going to discuss)
it is very difficult to “translate” a density functional calculation into
a simple-looking lattice fermion model. Ideally, we would like a model
which explains ferromagnetism at about the same level of ease, clarity,
and also confidence, as the simple Hubbard model does for antiferro-
magnetism. The exploration of several different routes is in progress,
and apparently, there are a number of ways to get ferromagnetism. We
do not know yet whether they are all realized in different systems, or
we will eventually settle for a single relevant mechanism.
First, we will describe the conventional mean-field (Stoner-like) cri-
teria of magnetic ordering. This we can do with a clear conscience even
though we have just stated that the criteria are misleading when applied
to the case of ferromagnetism in the simplest Hubbard model’. On the
one hand, mean field theory can be used with more confidence for the
well-understood case of antiferromagnetism: we will treat the spin den-
sity wave state in detail (Sec. 7.6). On the other hand, Stoner theory
gives a convenient framework for systematizing the knowledge about
band magnets. We close the chapter with a brief review of the mag-
netic properties of transition metals (mainly the iron group elements,
and chromium), as well as of a number of nearly ferromagnetic, and
weakly ferromagnetic, systems (Sec. 7.7). Further discussion of the dif-
ficult problem of ferromagnetism in lattice fermion models is relegated

-
‘Single-orbitd intermediate-coupling Hubbard models can show itinerant ferro-
magnetism with a Curie temperature lOOOK for a bandwidth 4eV (i.e., in the
N

parameter range relevant for Fe), but they have to be “fine-tuned”for the purpose.
See the Discussion starting on p. 458.