 Single-orbital interacting defect

An isolated spin-degenerate orbital coupled to a particle reservoir has Hamiltonian $H=ϵ(n_{\uparrow }+n_{\downarrow })+U{n}_{\uparrow }{n}_{\downarrow }$. The four occupation microstates have weights $1,z,z,q{z}^2$, where $z=e^{\beta (\mu -ϵ)}$ and $q=e^{-\beta U}$. Thus $\Xi =1+2z+q{z}^2$ and $\bar{n}=(2z+2q{z}^2)/\Xi$. The factor two counts distinct spin states. At $U=0$ the grand partition function factorizes into two independent fermionic orbitals; positive U separates the two electron-addition thresholds.