Persistent current in disordered Aharonov-Bohm rings with interacting electrons

The role of repulsive on-site and nearest-neighbor Coulomb interactions in disordered half-filled Aharanov-Bohm rings is studied by world-line quantum Monte Carlo simulations. The diverse dependence of the equilibrium persistent current on the couplings is found to relate systematically to the magnetic phase of the model: the maximum charge stiffness (or the persistent current) coexists with the phase-transition line between the dominant charge-density-wave state and the dominant spin-density-wave state. The stiffness vanishes with an increasing departure from the transition line. Thus in the disordered rings the Coulomb interactions can enhance the charge stiffness over the noninteracting limit in such a way as to drive the system toward the phase-transition regime. © 1996 The American Physical Society.