For , the leading objective is to avoid adjacent electrons of the same spin. The unpolarized Fermi sea, although optimal within the preceding restricted family, has interaction energy per site . Its cost grows linearly with , while states with no forbidden neighbouring pairs have zero interaction energy.
There are two independent spinless fermion t-V chains, one for each spin. On an even ring, avoiding all neighbouring pairs allows at most particles in each chain. Since the total is , both bounds must be saturated, and each chain must alternate occupied and empty sites. Their two independent choices give four limiting occupation patterns:
The first two are Néel states with one electron per site; the last two are charge density waves alternating doubly occupied and empty sites. Opposite-spin double occupation costs nothing in this particular Hamiltonian. Each species has alternating occupation in all four patterns.
These are the exact zero-interaction ground states at , and the limiting ordered configurations as . At large finite , virtual hopping admixes configurations with forbidden pairs, producing an energy correction of order . A finite ring can have superpositions of the ordered configurations, with possible quantum tunnelling splittings; four exactly degenerate product ground states are not implied at finite hopping. The four ordered choices describe the strong-coupling thermodynamic limit, with spontaneous symmetry breaking understood.
A tight binding chain of one species of fermions with nearest-neighbour hopping and density interaction. At half filling and , minimizing the interaction requires alternating occupied and empty sites. An even periodic chain has two such configurations at ; finite hopping admixes defects through virtual hopping. A finite ring can select superpositions rather than one ordered product state. Two uncoupled copies have four limiting ordered choices when each is half filled, without a general claim of exact finite-hopping fourfold state degeneracy.