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We study a generalized periodic Anderson model with on-site hybridization between wide-and narrow-band electrons and strong and local coupling with the lattice deformation. Provided that the interaction with the lattice is strong enough, the narrow-band electrons will be turned into small polarons which interact attractively with each other over short distances, leading to the formation of local pairs of narrow-band electrons. This leads to a pinning of the Fermi level which is due to the fact that narrow-band electrons exist only in pair states. By means of a generalized Schrieffer-WolfT' transformation we eliminate hybridization and obtain an eftective Hamiltonian which describes a contact interaction between local pairs and wide-band electrons as well as the direct hopping of local pairs and interparticle Coulomb interactions. In such a system the two types of mechanisms which can lead to superconductivity have been studied. The first one is due to direct local pair hopping and involves exclusively the narrow-band subsystem giving rise to a superconductivity analogous to superfluidity in He. The second one is due to a contact interaction between local pairs and pairs of wide-band electrons. This leads to a superconducting state involving both subsystems where the local pairs of the narrow-band subsystem induce Cooper pairing amongst the electrons of the wide-band subsystem.Consequently, the single-particle spectrum of the wide-band electrons opens up a gap around the position of the narrow band of electrons in pair states. We study the phase diagrams and the superconducting properties of two such coupled subsystems involving bosons and fermions as a function of the position of the narrow band with respect to the wide band (or the relative concentration of narrow and wide-band electrons). We also show that the critical temperature T, and T, /Es(0) [Es(0) being the energy gap) follow, in general, a strong and nonmonotonic variation. One of the most striking features of this system is that the pairs of narrow-band electrons exist in the normal phase and condense on approaching T, from above. The existence of such a narrow boson band together with a fermion band in the normal phase leads to characteristic behavior in the specific heat over temperature variation being very similar to that observed in recent studies of nonclassical superconductors.

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We have studied the extended Hubbard model with pair hopping in the atomic limit for arbitrary electron density and chemical potential. The Hamiltonian considered consists of (i) the effective on-site interaction U and (ii) the intersite charge exchange interactions I, determining the hopping of electron pairs between nearest-neighbour sites. The model can be treated as a simple effective model of a superconductor with very short coherence length in which electrons are localized and only electron pairs have a possibility of transferring. The phase diagrams and thermodynamic properties of this model have been determined within the variational approach, which treats the on-site interaction term exactly and the intersite interactions within the mean-field approximation. We have also obtained rigorous results for a linear chain (d = 1) in the ground state. Moreover, at T = 0 some results derived within the random phase approximation (and the spin-wave approximation) for d = 2 and 3 lattices and within the low-density expansions for d = 3 lattices are presented. Our investigation of the general case (as a function of the electron concentration n and as a function of the chemical potential μ) shows that, depending on the values of interaction parameters, the system can exhibit not only the homogeneous phases, superconducting (SS) and nonordered (NO), but also the phase separated states (PS: SS-NO). The system considered exhibits interesting multicritical behaviour including tricritical points.