We present a theory describing the mechanism for the two-dimensional (2D) metal-insulator transition (MIT) in absence of disorder. A two-band Hubbard model is introduced, describing vacancy-interstitial pair excitations within the Wigner crystal. Kinetic energy gained by delocalizing such excitations is found to lead to an instability of the insulator to self-doping above a critical carrier concentration $n=n_c$, mapping the problem to a density-driven Mott MIT. This mechanism provides a natural microscopic picture of several puzzling experimental features, including the large effective mass enhancement, the large resistivity drop, and the large positive magneto-resistance on the metallic side of the transition. We also present a global phase diagram for the clean 2D electron gas as a function of $n$ and parallel magnetic field $B_{\shortparallel}$, which agrees well with experimental findings in ultra clean samples.
Experiments performed over the last twenty years have revealed striking similarities between several two-dimensional (2D) fermion systems, including diluted two-dimensional electron liquids in semiconductors, 3He monolayers, and layered organic charge-transfer salts. These experimental results, together with recent theoretical advances, provide compelling evidence that strong electronic correlations - Wigner-Mott physics - dominate the universal features of the corresponding metal-insulator transitions (MIT). Here we review the recent theoretical work exploring quantum criticality of Mott and …
Realization of a Wigner-Mott insulator in 6R-TaS$_2$ superconductor
Beijing National Center for Condensed Matter Physics and Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院物理研究所（北京凝聚态物理国家研究中心））；School of Physical Sciences, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院大学物理科学学院）；Hefei National Laboratory（合肥国家实验室）；Department of Physics, Boston College（波士顿学院物理系）
We study theoretically the quantum phase transition from a metal to a Wigner-Mott insulator at fractional commensurate filling on a two-leg ladder. We show that a continuous transition out of a symmetry-preserving Luttinger liquid metal is possible where the onset of insulating behavior is accompanied by the breaking of the lattice translation symmetry. At fillings $ν= 1/m$ per spin per unit cell, we find that the spin degrees of freedom also acquire a gap at the Wigner-Mott transition for odd integer $m$. In contrast for even integer $m$, the spin sector remains gapless and the resulting insu…
We have studied the doping-driven orbital-selective Mott transition in multi-band Hubbard models with equal band width in the presence of crystal field splitting. Crystal field splitting lifts one of the bands while leaving the others degenerate. We use single-site dynamical mean-field theory combined with continuous time quantum Monte Carlo impurity solver to calculate a phase diagram as a function of total electron filling $N$ and crystal field splitting $Δ$. We find a large region of orbital-selective Mott phase in the phase diagram when the doping is large enough. Further analysis indicate…
It is widely recognised that the effect of doping into a Mott insulator is complicated and unpredictable, as can be seen by examining the Hall coefficient in high $T_{\rm c}$ cuprates. The doping effect, including the electron-hole doping asymmetry, may be more straightforward in doped organic Mott insulators owing to their simple electronic structures. Here we investigate the doping asymmetry of an organic Mott insulator by carrying out electric-double-layer transistor measurements and using cluster perturbation theory. The calculations predict that strongly anisotropic suppression of the spe…
High-$T_{\rm C}$ superconductors show anomalous transport properties in their normal states, such as the bad-metal and pseudogap behaviors. To discuss their origins, it is important to speculate whether these behaviors are material-dependent or universal phenomena in the proximity of the Mott transition, by investigating similar but different material systems. An organic Mott transistor is suitable for this purpose owing to the adjacency between the two-dimensional Mott insulating and superconducting states, simple electronic properties, and high doping/bandwidth tunability in the same sample.…
We investigate the double layered Sr$_{3}$(Ru$_{1-x}$Mn$_{x}$)$_{2}$O$_{7}$ and its doping-induced quantum phase transition (QPT) from a metal to an antiferromagnetic (AFM) Mott insulator. Using spectroscopic imaging with the scanning tunneling microscope (STM), we visualize the evolution of the electronic states in real- and momentum-space. We find a partial-gap in the tunneling density of states at the Fermi energy (E$_{F}$) that develops with doping to form a weak Mott insulating (Δ ~ 100meV) state. Near the QPT, we discover a spatial electronic reorganization into a commensurate checkerboa…
We present the carrier transport properties in the vicinity of a doping-driven Mott transition observed at a field-effect transistor (FET) channel using a single crystal of the typical two-dimensional organic Mott insulator $κ$-(BEDT-TTF)$_2$CuN(CN)$_2$Cl ($κ$-Cl).The FET shows a continuous metal$-$insulator transition (MIT) as electrostatic doping proceeds. The phase transition appears to involve two-step crossovers, one in Hall measurement and the other in conductivity measurement. The crossover in conductivity occurs around the conductance quantum $e^2/h$ , and hence is not associated with …
We study possible Weyl semimetals of strongly-correlated electrons by investigating magnetotransport properties in pyrochlore R2Ir2O7 (R=rare-earth ions), choosing three types of R ions to design the exchange coupling scheme between R 4f and Ir 5d moments; non-magnetic Eu (4f6), isotropic Gd (4f7), and anisotropic Tb (4f8). In the doping-induced semimetallic state, distinctive features of magnetoresistance and Hall effect are observed in R=Gd and Tb compounds due to the effects of the exchange-enhanced isotropic and anisotropic Zeeman fields, respectively, exemplifying the double Weyl semimeta…
The paramagnetic phase of the one-band Hubbard model is studied at zero-temperature, within the framework of dynamical mean-field theory, and for general particle-hole asymmetry where a doping-induced Mott transition occurs. Our primary focus is the Mott insulator (MI) phase, and our main aim to establish what can be shown exactly about it. To handle the locally doubly-degenerate MI requires two distinct self-energies, which reflect the broken symmetry nature of the phase and together determine the standard single self-energy. Exact results are obtained for the local charge, local magnetic mom…
We study the effects of electron doping in Mott insulators containing d^4 ions such as Ru4+, Os4+, Rh5+, and Ir5+ with J=0 singlet ground state. Depending on the strength of the spin-orbit coupling, the undoped systems are either nonmagnetic or host an unusual, excitonic magnetism arising from a condensation of the excited J=1 triplet states of t_2g^4. We find that the interaction between J-excitons and doped carriers strongly supports ferromagnetism, converting both the nonmagnetic and antiferromagnetic phases of the parent insulator into a ferromagnetic metal, and further to a nonmagnetic me…
Motivated by the commonplace observation of Mott insulators away from integer filling, we construct a simple thermodynamic argument for phase separation in first-order doping-driven Mott transitions. We show how to compute the critical dopings required to drive the Mott transition using electronic structure calculations for the titanate family of perovskites, finding good agreement with experiment. The theory predicts the transition is percolative and should exhibit Coulomb frustration.
The recent detailed study of quasi-one-dimensional iron-based ladders, with the $3d$ iron electronic density $n = 6$, has unveiled surprises, such as orbital-selective phases. However, similar studies for $n=6$ iron chains are still rare. Here, a three-orbital electronic Hubbard model was constructed to study the magnetic and electronic properties of the quasi-one-dimensional $n=6$ iron chain Ce$_2$O$_2$FeSe$_2$, with focus on the effect of doping. Specifically, introducing the Hubbard $U$ and Hund $J_{H}$ couplings and studying the model via the density matrix renormalization group, we report…
Doping-driven Mott transition from steady-state density functional theory
Universidad de Alicante（阿利坎特大学）；Universidad del País Vasco EHU（巴斯克大学）；IKERBASQUE, Basque Foundation for Science（伊克尔巴斯奎，巴斯克科学基金会）；Donostia International Physics Center (DIPC)（圣塞巴斯蒂安国际物理中心）
Inspired by the Nagaoka ferromagnetism, we propose an itinerant model to study the transition between the Mott singlet state and a ferromagnetic state by emulating a doping process in finite lattices. In the Nagaoka ferromagnetism, the total spin of the system takes the maximum value when an electron is removed from the half-filled system. To incorporate a procedure of the electron removal, our model contains extra sites as a reservoir of electrons, and the chemical potential of the reservoir controls the distribution of electrons. As a function of the chemical potential, the system exhibits g…
The physics of quantum many-body systems have been studied using bulk correlated materials, and recently, moiré superlattices formed by atomic bilayers have appeared as a novel platform in which the carrier concentration and the band structures are highly tunable. In this brief review, we introduce an intermediate platform between those systems, namely, a band-filling- and bandwidth-tunable electric double-layer transistor based on a real organic Mott insulator $κ$-(BEDT-TTF)$_{2}$Cu[N(CN)$_{2}$]Cl. In the proximity of the bandwidth-control Mott transition at half filling, both electron and ho…
We devise a model to explain why twisted bi-layer graphene (TBLG) exhibits insulating behavior when $ν=2,3$ charges occupy a unit moiré cell, a feature attributed to Mottness, but not for $ν=1$, clearly inconsistent with Mott insulation. We compute $r_s=E_U/E_K$, where $E_U$ and $E_K$ are the potential and kinetic energies, respectively, and show that (i) the Mott criterion lies at a density $10^4$ higher than in the experiments and (ii) a transition to a series of Wigner crystalline states exists as a function of $ν$. We find, for $ν=1$, $r_s$ fails to cross the threshold ($r_s = 37$) for the…
We investigate the evolution of the Mott insulators in the triangular lattice Hubbard Model, as a function of hole doping $δ$ in both the strong and intermediate coupling limits. Using the advanced density matrix renormalization group (DMRG) method, at light hole doping $δ\lesssim 10\%$, we find a significant difference between strong and intermediate couplings. Notably, at intermediate coupling an unusual metallic state emerges, with short ranged spin correlations but long ranged spin-chirality order. Moreover, no clear Fermi surface or wave-vector is observed, this chiral metal also exhibits…
Tailoring transport properties of strongly correlated electron systems in a controlled fashion counts among the dreams of materials scientists. In copper oxides, varying the carrier concentration is a tool to obtain high-temperature superconducting phases. In manganites, doping results in exotic physics such as insulator-metal transitions (IMT), colossal magnetoresistance (CMR), orbital- or charge-ordered (CO) or charge-disproportionate (CD) states. In most oxides, antiferromagnetic order and charge-disproportionation are asssociated with insulating behavior. Here we report the realization of …
In strongly correlated electron systems, the emergence of states in the Mott gap in the single-particle spectrum following the doping of the Mott insulator is a remarkable feature that cannot be explained in a conventional rigid-band picture. Here, based on an analysis of the quantum numbers and the overlaps of relevant states, as well as through a demonstration using the ladder and bilayer t-J models, it is shown that in a continuous Mott transition due to hole doping, the magnetically excited states of the Mott insulator generally emerge in the electron-addition spectrum with the dispersion …
Ambipolar doping-induced surface in-gap state on Mott-insulating Ca$_2$RuO$_4$
Institute for Solid State Physics, The University of Tokyo（东京大学固体物理研究所）；Roma Tre University（罗马第三大学）；CNR-SPIN（意大利国家研究委员会自旋电子学研究所）；Dipartimento di Fisica ”E.R. Caianiello”, Università di Salerno（萨莱诺大学E.R. Caianiello物理学系）；Physik-Institut, Universität Zürich（苏黎世大学物理研究所）
High temperature superconductivity in cuprates arises from doping a parent Mott insulator by electrons or holes. A central issue is how the Mott gap evolves and the low-energy states emerge with doping. Here we report angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy measurements on a cuprate parent compound by sequential in situ electron doping. The chemical potential jumps to the bottom of the upper Hubbard band upon a slight electron doping, making it possible to directly visualize the charge transfer band and the full Mott gap region. With increasing doping, the Mott gap rapidly collapses due to t…
Substitutional doping of Cu in diamond: Mott physics with $p$ orbitals
在金刚石中重掺硼（C：B）和硅中重掺硼（Si：B）形成的杂质带中发现超导性，为新的超导材料族的可能性提供了一条途径。基于铜原子在高温超导材料中所起的特殊作用，本文研究了铜原子在金刚石中的替代掺杂效应。在高温超导材料中，铜原子的$d$轨道是产生各种关联诱导相的主要原因。我们广泛的第一性原理计算平均在各种几何形状的基础上密度泛函理论，表明形成的中间带隙，这主要是由于$t_{2g}$和$4p$状态的铜。当杂质浓度大于$\sim 1%, the effect of $ 2 p $ bands of neighboring carbon atoms can be ignored. Based on our detailed analysis, we suggest a two band model for the mid-gap states consisting of a quarter-filled hole like $ t_{2g} $ band, and a half-filled band of $ 4 p $ states. Increasing the concentration of the Cu impurity beyond $ \sim 5%时，完全关闭基质金刚石的光谱间隙。
The mechanism of the unconventional topological superconductivity (TSC) remains a long-standing issue. We investigate the quantum phase diagram of the extended $t$-$J$-$J_χ$ model including spin chiral interactions on triangular lattice based on the state-of-the-art density matrix renormalization group simulations. We identify distinct classes of superconducting phases characterized by nonzero topological Chern numbers $C=1$ and $2$, and a nematic d-wave superconducting phase with a zero Chern number. The TSC states are shown to emerge from doping either a magnetic insulator or chiral spin liq…
We study the effects of dilute La and Rh doping on the electronic structure of the relativistic Mott insulator Sr$_2$IrO$_4$ using fully relativistic and magnetically non-collinear density functional theory with the inclusion of an on-site Hubbard $U$. To model doping effects, we have adopted the supercell approach that allows for a realistic treatment of structural relaxations and electronic effects beyond a purely rigid band approach. By means of the band unfolding technique we have computed the spectral function and constructed the effective band structure and Fermi surface (FS), which are …
The structural, magnetic, electrical and transport properties of FeV2O4, by doping Li and Cr ions respectively in A and B sites, have been studied. Dilution of A-site by Li doping increases the ferri-magnetic ordering temperature and decreases the ferroelectric transition temperature. This also decreases the V-V distances which in effect increases the A-V coupling. This increased A-V coupling dominates over the decrease in A-V coupling due to doping of non-magnetic Li. On the other hand, Cr doping increases the ferri-magnetic ordering temperature but does not alter the ferroelectric transition…
Doping the distorted-perovskite Mott insulators LaTiO$_3$ and GdTiO$_3$ with a single SrO layer along the [001] direction gives rise to a rich correlated electronic structure. A realistic superlattice study by means of the charge self-consistent combination of density functional theory with dynamical mean-field theory reveals layer- and temperature-dependent multi-orbital metal-insulator transitions. An orbital-selective metallic layer at the interface dissolves via an orbital-polarized doped-Mott state into an orbital-ordered insulating regime beyond the two conducting TiO$_2$ layers. We find…
We investigate the excitation spectrum of strongly correlated sodium cobaltate within a realistic many-body description beyond dynamical mean-field theory (DMFT). At lower doping around $x$=0.3, rather close to Mott-critical half-filling, the single-particle spectral function of Na$_x$CoO$_2$ displays an upper Hubbard band which is captured within DMFT. Momentum-dependent self-energy effects beyond DMFT become dominant at higher doping. Around a doping level of $x\sim 0.67$, the incoherent excitations give way to finite-energy spin-polaron excitations in close agreement with optics experiments…
