Renormalization by continuous unitary transformations: one-dimensional spinless fermions

A renormalization scheme for interacting fermionic systems is presented where the renormalization is carried out in terms of the fermionic degrees of freedom. The scheme is based on continuous unitary transformations of the Hamiltonian which stays hermitian throughout the renormalization flow, whereby any frequency dependence is avoided. The approach is illustrated in detail for a model of spinless fermions with nearest neighbour repulsion in one dimension. Even though the fermionic degrees of freedom do not provide an easy starting point in one dimension favorable results are obtained which agree well with the exact findings based on Bethe ansatz.