We present an improved upper bound for the ground state energy of lattice
fermion models with sign problem. The bound can be computed by numerical
simulation of a recently proposed family of deformed Hamiltonians with no sign
problem. For one dimensional models, we expect the bound to be particularly
effective and practical extrapolation procedures are discussed. In particular,
in a model of spinless interacting fermions and in the Hubbard model at various
filling and Coulomb repulsion we show how such techniques can estimate ground
state energies and correlation function with great accuracy.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figures; to appear in Physical Review
