Phase diagram of the one-dimensional extended Hubbard model with attractive and/or repulsive interactions at quarter filling

We study the phase diagram of the one-dimensional U-V model at quarter filling in the most general case where the on-site and first-neighbor interactions U and V can be both attractive and repulsive. The results have been obtained using exact diagonalization of small clusters and variational techniques, as well as exact results in various limits. We have analyzed four properties of the ground state: (i) whether it is insulating or metallic; (ii) whether it is homogeneous or phase separated; (iii) whether it has a spin gap; (iv) whether it has dominant superconducting fluctuations. With eight phases, the resulting phase diagram is unexpectedly rich. The four phases not found in the weak coupling limit are: (i) an insulating phase when U and V are large enough; (ii) a region of phase separation when V is attractive; (iii) another region of phase separation when V is large enough and U small; (iv) a region with dominant superconducting fluctuations when V is intermediate and U small. The actual nature of this last plase, which has pairs but no spin gap, is not fully clear yet.