Interacting charge-ordered states in a correlated diatomic polymer

Using physical arguments based on a real-space view of Peierls dimerization, we predict that site energy differences in a diatomic polymer can increase the dimerization in the presence of strong Coulomb correlations. This increase in dimerization continues until the difference in site energies reaches a maximum value, which itself is an increasing function of the correlation parameter. The effect of the site energy differences in the strongly correlated region is therefore opposite to that in the uncorrelated limit. Exact numerical calculations are presented to substantiate this surprising conclusion.