Spontaneous Spin Polarization in Quantum Wires

A number of recent experiments report spin polarization in quantum wires in the absence of magnetic fields. These observations are in apparent contradiction with the Lieb-Mattis theorem, which forbids spontaneous spin polarization in one dimension. We show that sufficiently strong interactions between electrons induce deviations from the strictly one-dimensional geometry and indeed give rise to a ferromagnetic ground state in a certain range of electron densities. At higher densities, more complicated spin interactions lead to a possibly novel ground state.