A Configuration Interaction approach to hole pairing in the Two-Dimensional Hubbard Model

The interactions between holes in the Hubbard model, in the low density, intermediate to strong coupling limit, are investigated by systematically improving mean field calculations. The Configuration Interaction basis set is constructed by applying to local Unrestricted Hartree-Fock configurations all lattice translations and rotations. It is shown that this technique reproduces, correctly, the properties of the Heisenberg model, in the limit of large U. Upon doping, dressed spin polarons in neighboring sites have an increased kinetic energy and an enhanced hopping rate. Both effects are of the order of the hopping integral and lead to an effective attraction at intermediate couplings.