Interchain hopping in systems of coupled chains of correlated electrons is
investigated by exact diagonalizations and Quantum-Monte-Carlo methods. For two
weakly coupled Hubbard chains at commensurate densities (e.g. n=1/3) the
splitting at the Fermi level between bonding and antibonding bands is strongly
reduced (but not suppressed) by repulsive interactions extending to a few
lattice spacings. The magnitude of this reduction is directly connected to the
exponent α of the 1D Luttinger liquid. However, we show that the
incoherent part of the single particle spectral function is much less affected
by the interchain coupling. This suggests that incoherent interchain hopping
could occur for intermediate α values.Comment: 4 pages, LaTeX 3.0, 7 PostScript figures in uuencoded for