Enhancement of Charge Density Wave Correlations in a Holstein Model with an Anharmonic Phonon Potential

The Holstein Hamiltonian describes itinerant electrons whose site density couples to local phonon degrees of freedom. In the single site limit, at half-filling, the electron-phonon coupling results in a double well structure for the lattice displacement, favoring empty or doubly occupied sites. In two dimensions, and on a bipartite lattice in $d \geq 2$, an intersite hopping causes these doubly occupied and empty sites to alternate in a charge density wave (CDW) pattern when the temperature is lowered. Because a discrete symmetry is broken, this occurs in a conventional second-order transition at finite $T_{\rm cdw}$. In this paper, we investigate the effect of changing the phonon potential energy to one with an intrinsic double well structure even in the absence of an electron-phonon coupling. While this aids in the initial process of pair formation, the implications for subsequent CDW order are non-trivial. One expects that, when the electron-phonon coupling is too strong, the double wells become deep and the polaron mass large, an effect which reduces $T_{\rm cdw}$. We show here the existence of regions of parameter space where the double well potential, while aiding local pair formation, does so in a way which also substantially enhances long range CDW order.