We consider a heterostructure of a metal and a barrier with onsite correlation at half filling using unrestricted Hartree Fock. We find that above a certain value of correlation strength in the barrier planes, the system is a Mott insulator, while below this value the system still behaves like a gapless insulator. The energy spectrum is found to be very novel with the presence of multiple gaps. Thus the system remains non metallic for any finite value of correlation.
Using inhomogeneous dynamical mean-field theory, we argue that the normal-metal proximity effect forces any finite number of "barrier" planes that are described by the (paramagnetic) Hubbard model and sandwiched between semi-infinite metallic leads to always be a Fermi liquid at T=0. This then implies that the inhomogeneous system restores lattice periodicity at zero frequency, has a well-defined Fermi surface, and should display perfect (ballistic) conductivity or "transparency". These results are, however, fragile with respect to finite frequency, V, T, disorder, or magnetism, all of which r…
The Magneli phase Ti4O7 exhibits two sharp jumps in resistivity with coupled structural transitions as a function of temperature at Tc1=142 K and Tc2=154 K. We have studied electronic structure changes across the two transitions using 7 eV laser, soft x-ray and hard x-ray (HX) photoemission spectroscopy (PES). Ti 2p-3d resonant PES and HX-PES show a clear metallic Fermi-edge and mixed valency above Tc2. The low temperature phase below Tc1 shows a clear insulating gap of 100 meV. The intermediate phase between Tc1 and Tc2 indicates a pseudogap coexisting with remnant coherent states. HX-PES and…
Barrier planes described by the Ionic Hubbard model and sandwiched between metallic planes on both sides are studied using unrestricted Hartree Fock. For zero onsite correlation, the presence of the metallic interface generates an additional gap in the energy spectrum away from half filling, if the chemically modulated potential in the barrier planes exceed a critical value. There is reentrant behaviour and an insulator-metal-insulator transition as we tune onsite correlation for fixed site potential. The metal is thus able to penetrate the barrier planes due to proximity effect, in a system t…
A Metal-Disordered Mott insulator-Metal heterostructure is studied at half-fiiling using unrestricted Hartree Fock method. The corresponding clean system has been shown to be an insulator for any finite on site correlation. Interestingly we find that introduction of explicit disorder induces a metal-insulator transition at a critical value of disorder. The critical value corresponds to the point at which disorder nullifies the effect of onsite correlation. The wavefunctions are found to delocalize by increasing disorder, rendering the system metallic.
We study the effect of two metallic slabs on the collective dynamics of electrons in graphene positioned between the two slabs. We show that if the slabs are perfect conductors the plasmons of graphene display a linear dispersion relation. The velocity of these acoustic plasmons crucially depends on the distance between the two metal gates and the graphene sheet. In the case of generic slabs, the dispersion relation of graphene plasmons is much more complicated but we find that acoustic plasmons can still be obtained under specific conditions.
We find that isoelectronic disorder destroys the spectral gap in a Mott-Hubbard insulator in 2D leading, most unexpectedly, to a new metallic phase. This phase is spatially inhomogeneous with metallic behavior coexisting with antiferromagnetic long range order. Even though the Mott gap in the pure system is much larger than antiferromagnetic exchange, the spectral gap is destroyed locally in regions where the disorder potential is high enough to overcome the inter-electron repulsion thereby generating puddles where charge fluctuations are enhanced. With increasing disorder, these puddles expan…
Electronic properties of heterostructures in which a finite number of Mott-insulator layers are sandwiched by semi-infinite metallic leads are investigated by using the dynamical-mean-field method combined with the Keldysh Green's function technique to account for the finite bias voltage between the leads. Current across the junction is computed as a function of bias voltage. Electron spectral functions in the interacting region are shown to evolve by an applied bias voltage. This effect is measurable by photoemission spectroscopy and scanning tunneling microscopy. Further predictions are made…
The Hall angle in the doped V_2O_3 is discussed on the basis of an extended Ginzburg-Landau theory of spin fluctuations. A spinon-like collective transport process beyond the ordinary quasiparticle transport theory is necessary to understand the experiment. At the same time a criticism of a quasiparticle transport theory on the basis of the fluctuation exchange (FLEX) approximation is made.
The mechanism that drives a metal-insulator transition in an undoped quasi-one-dimensional Mott insulator is examined in the framework of the Hubbard model with two different hoppings t_{perp 1} and t_{perp 2} between nearest-neighbor chains. By applying an N_{perp}-chain renormalization group method at the two-loop level, we show how a metallic state emerges when both t_{perp 1} and t_{perp 2} exceed critical values. In the metallic phase, the quasiparticle weight becomes finite and develops a strong momentum dependence. We discuss the temperature dependence of the resistivity and the impact …
LDA+DMFT, the computation scheme merging the local density approximation and the dynamical mean-field theory, is employed to calculate spectra both below and above the Fermi energy and spin and orbital occupations in the correlated paramagnetic metallic and Mott insulating phase of V_2O_3. The self-consistent DMFT equations are solved by quantum Monte Carlo simulations. Room temperature calculations provide direct comparison with experiment. They show a significant increase of the quasiparticle height in comparison with the results at 1160 K. We also obtain new insights into the nature of the …
We have investigated the dispersion renormalization $Z_{disp}$ in La$_{2-x}$Sr$_x$CuO$_4$ (LSCO) over the wide doping range of $x=0.03-0.30$, for binding energies extending to several hundred meV's. Strong correlation effects conspire in such a way that the system exhibits an LDA-like dispersion which essentially `undresses' ($Z_{disp}\to 1$) as the Mott insulator is approached. Our finding that the Mott insulator contains `nascent' or `preformed' metallic states with a vanishing spectral weight offers a challenge to existing theoretical scenarios for cuprates.
It is shown that LaTiO_3 in superlattices with SrTiO_3 is not a Mott insulator but a strongly correlated metal. The tetragonal lattice geometry imposed by the SrTiO_3 substrate leads to an increase of the Ti 3d t2g band width and a reversal of the t2g crystal field relative to the orthorhombic bulk geometry. Using dynamical mean field theory based on finite-temperature multi-band exact diagonalization we show that, as a result of these effects, local Coulomb interactions are not strong enough to induce a Mott transition in tetragonal LaTiO_3. The metalicity of these heterostructures is therefo…
It is well established that for non-interacting electrons, increasing disorder drives a metal into a gapless localized Anderson insulator. While in three dimensions a threshold in disorder must be crossed for the transition, in two dimensions and lower, the smallest amount of disorder destabilizes the metal. The nature of the metal-insulator transition in an interacting system remains unresolved. Here we explore the effect of disorder on a strongly correlated Mott insulator without changing the carrier concentration. Angle resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) measurements on copper inte…
While a specific kind of strange metal is increasingly found to be the "normal" states in a wide variety of unconventional superconductors, its microscopic origin is presently a hotly debated enigma. Using dynamical mean-field theory (DMFT) based on hybridization expansion of continuous-time quantum Monte-Carlo (CTQMC) solver for an extended two-band Hubbard model (2BHM), we investigate the conditions underlying the emergence of such a metal. Specifically, we tie strange metallicity to an orbital-selective Mottness in 2BHM or momentum-selective Mott phase (OSMP) in 2D Hubbard models inspired b…
We propose one possible mechanism for an anomalous metallic phase appearing frequently in two spatial dimensions, that is, local pairing fluctuations. Introducing a pair-rotor representation to decompose bare electrons into collective pairing excitations and renormalized electrons, we derive an SU(2) gauge theory of the Hubbard model as an extended version of its U(1) gauge theory\cite{Florens,LeeLee} to allow only local density fluctuations. Since our effective SU(2) gauge theory admits two kinds of collective bosons corresponding to pair excitations and density fluctuations respectively, an …
We investigate the low-temperature electrical and thermal transport properties in atomically precise metallic heterostructures involving strongly-correlated electron systems. The model of the Mott-insulator/ band-insulator superlattice was discussed in the framework of the slave-boson mean-field approximation and transport quantities were derived by use of the Boltzmann transport equation in the relaxation-time approximation. The results for the optical conductivity are in good agreement with recently published experimental data on (LaTiO$_3)_N$/(SrTiO$_3)_M$ superlattices and allow us to esti…
A nearly free electron metal and a Mott insulating state can be thought of as opposite ends of possibilities for the motion of electrons in a solid. In the magnetic oxide metal PdCrO$_{2}$, these two coexist as alternating layers. Using angle resolved photoemission, we surprisingly find sharp band-like features in the one-electron removal spectral function of the correlated subsystem. We show that these arise because a hole created in the Mott layer moves to and propagates in the metallic layer while retaining memory of the Mott layer's magnetism. This picture is quantitatively supported by a …
Mott transitions in real materials are first order and almost always associated with lattice distortions, both features promoting the emergence of nanotextured phases. This nanoscale self-organization creates spatially inhomogeneous regions, which can host and protect transient non-thermal electronic and lattice states triggered by light excitation. Here, we combine time-resolved X-ray microscopy with a Landau-Ginzburg functional approach for calculating the strain and electronic real-space configurations. We investigate V$_2$O$_3$, the archetypal Mott insulator in which nanoscale self-organiz…
Unveiling the physics that governs the intertwining between the nanoscale self-organization and the dynamics of insulator-to-metal transitions (\textit{IMT}) is key for controlling on demand the ultrafast switching in strongly correlated materials and nano-devices. A paradigmatic case is the \textit{IMT} in V$_2$O$_3$, for which the mechanism that leads to the nucleation and growth of metallic nano-droplets out of the supposedly homogeneous Mott insulating phase is still a mystery. Here, we combine X-ray photoemission electron microscopy and ultrafast non-equilibrium optical spectroscopy to in…
Stoichiometric Sr2IrO4 is a ferromagnetic Jeff = 1/2 Mott insulator driven by strong spin-orbit coupling. Introduction of very dilute oxygen vacancies into single-crystal Sr2IrO4-delta with delta < 0.04 leads to significant changes in lattice parameters and an insulator-to-metal transition at TMI = 105 K. The highly anisotropic electrical resistivity of the low-temperature metallic state for delta ~ 0.04 exhibits anomalous properties characterized by non-Ohmic behavior and an abrupt current-induced transition in the resistivity at T* = 52 K, which separates two regimes of resisitive switching …
Metal insulator transitions driven by local Coulomb interactions are among the most fascinating phenomena in condensed matter physics. They occur in a large variety of transition metal compounds. Most of these strongly correlated materials consist of valence bands derived from electronic d shells where intra- and inter-orbital Coulomb interactions are equally important and where the crystal structure splits the valence bands into narrow and wide subbands. A fundamental question is whether these systems exhibit a common Mott transition, implying all subbands to be either metallic or insulating,…
We study a simple model of photovoltaic energy harvesting across a Mott insulating gap consisting of a correlated layer connected to two metallic leads held at different chemical potentials. Upon driving the layer with a time periodic electric field a particle current is induced from the low-energy to the high-energy lead. We address in particular the issue of impact ionization, whereby a particle photoexcited to the high-energy part of the upper Hubbard band uses its extra energy to produce a second particle-hole excitation. We find a drastic increase of the photocurrent upon entering the fre…
Filling-control metal-insulator transition on the two-dimensional Hubbard model is investigated by using the correlator projection method, which takes into account momentum dependence of the free energy beyond the dynamical mean-field theory. The phase diagram of metals and Mott insulators is analyzed. Lifshitz transitions occur simultaneously with metal-insulator transitions at large Coulomb repulsion. On the other hand, they are separated each other for lower Coulomb repulsion, where the phase sandwiched by the Lifshitz and metal-insulator transitions appears to show violation of the Lutting…
We study a range of thermodynamic properties (charge susceptibility, specific heat, entropy and spin susceptibility) of the Hubbard model on the anisotropic triangular lattice at half filling by means of the numerical finite-temperature Lanczos method. We observe clear signatures of a metal-Mott insulator transition in the charge susceptibility, and show that the metallic phase is characterized by a small charge susceptibility, large entropy, low coherence temperature, large renormalized quasiparticle mass, and large spin susceptibility. We show that the local magnetic moment in the metallic p…
The Mott insulator LaVO$_3$ is known to become metallic if La is replaced by small concentrations of Ca. Since surface quasi-particle spectra of various perovskites are more strongly correlated than their bulk spectra, the coexistence of a metallic bulk and an insulating surface layer might be feasible. To investigate this possibility the dynamical mean field theory is used to evaluate the quasi-particle spectra in the bulk and at the surface of Ca$_x$La$_{1-x}$VO$_3$ for various Ca concentrations.
Motivated by experiments on atomically smooth layers of LaTiO$_3$, a Mott insulator, sandwiched between layers of SrTiO$_3$, a band insulator, a simple model for such heterostructures is studied using quasi one-dimensional lattices and the Lanczos method. Taking both the local and long-range Coulomb interactions into account, and computing the layer dependent local density of states, a metallic state was found at the interface whose extent strongly depends on the dielectric constant of the material. We also observed that the antiferromagnetic correlations in the bulk Mott phase persist into th…
The possibility of novel behavior at interfaces between strongly and weakly correlated materials has come under increased study recently. In this paper, we use determinant Quantum Monte Carlo to determine the inter-penetration of metallic and Mott insulator physics across an interface in the two dimensional Hubbard Hamiltonian. We quantify the behavior of the density of states at the Fermi level and the short and long range antiferromagnetism as functions of the distance from the interface and with different interaction strength, temperature and hopping across the interface. Induced metallic b…
We address the nature of the Mott transition in the Hubbard model at half-filling using cluster Dynamical Mean Field Theory (DMFT). We compare cluster DMFT results with those of single site DMFT. We show that inclusion of the short range correlations on top of the on-site correlations, already treated exactly in single site DMFT, do not change the nature of the transition between the paramagnetic metal and the paramagnetic Mott insulator, which remains first order. However, the short range correlations reduce substantially the critical $U$ and modify the shape of transition lines. Moreover, th…
The electronic structure at the interface between a topological band insulator and a Mott insulator is studied within layer dynamical mean field theory. To represent the bulk phases of these systems, we use the generalized Bernevig-Hughes-Zhang model that incorporates the Hubbard-like onsite Coulomb energy U in addition to the spin-orbit coupling term that causes band inversion. The topological and Mott insulating phases are realized by appropriately choosing smaller and larger values of U, respectively. As expected, the interface is found to be metallic because of the localized edge state. Wh…
We investigate the characteristics of the metallic phase near the Mott transition in the Kagomé lattice Hubbard model using the cellular dynamical mean field theory. By calculating the specific heat and spin correlation functions, we demonstrate that the quasiparticles show anomalous properties in the metallic phase close to the Mott transition. We find clear evidence for the multi-band heavy quasiparticles in the specific heat, which gives rise to unusual temperature dependence of the spin correlation functions.
We characterize the low-energy physics of the two-orbital Hubbard model in the orbital-selective Mott phase, in which one band is metallic and the other insulating. Using dynamical mean-field theory with the numerical renormalization group at zero temperature, we show that this phase has a ferromagnetic instability for any nonzero Hund's rule exchange interaction, which can be understood in terms of an effective spin-1 Kondo Hamiltonian. The metallic band therefore behaves as a singular Fermi liquid for which the self-energy has a logarithmic singularity at the Fermi energy.
We calculate the optical and DC conductivity for half-filled disordered Hubbard model near the Mott metal-insulator transition. As in the clean case, large metallic resistivity is driven by a strong inelastic scattering, and Drude-like peak in the optical conductivity persists even at temperatures when the resistivity is well beyond the semiclassical Mott-Ioffe-Regel limit. Local random potential does not introduce new charge carriers, but it induces effective local carrier doping and broadens the bandwidth. This makes the system more metallic, in agreement with the recent experiments on X-ray…
We model a quantum dot-array (with one electron per dot) comprising of two (or more than two) coupled dots by an extended Hubbard Hamiltonian to investigate the role played by the inter-dot tunneling amplitude td, together with intra-dot (U) and inter-dot(U1) coulomb repulsions, in the singlet / triplet bound state formation and evolution of the system from the Mott-insulator-like state to a correlated semi-metallic state via charge-bond-order route. In the presence of magnetic field, td is complex due to the appearance of Peierls phase factor. We introduce a short-ranged inter-dot capacitive …
Frequency shifts and nuclear relaxations of 13C NMR of the metal-insulator alternating material, (Me-3,5-DIP)[Ni(dmit)2]2, are presented. The NMR absorption lines originating from metallic and insulating layers are well resolved, which evidences the coexistence of localized spins (π_loc) and conduction π-electrons. The insulating layer is newly found to undergo antiferromagnetic long range order at about 2.5 K, suggesting emergence of S=1/2 Mott insulator. In the metallic layer, we found significant suppressions of static and dynamical susceptibilities of conduction electrons below 35 K, where…
We have fabricated a metallic structure in an organic Mott insulator $κ$-(BEDT-TTF)$_2$Cu[N(CN)$_2$]Cl. The periodic metallic domains of approximately 90$\times$90 $μ$m$^2$ obtained by X-ray irradiation through a molybdenum mesh mask are visualized by scanning microregion infrared reflectance spectroscopy technique. No deterioration by irradiation is found in a range of nanometer to micrometer scales. We demonstrate that the present processing method is applicable for the fabrication of molecular electronic devices.
1T-TaS$_2$ is a charge-density-wave (CDW) compound with a Mott-insulating ground state. The metallic state obtained by doping, substitution or pulsed charge injection is characterized by an emergent CDW domain wall network, while single domain walls can be found in the pristine Mott state. Here we study whether and how the single walls become metallic. Tunneling spectroscopy reveals partial suppression of the Mott gap and the presence of in-gap states strongly localized at the domain-wall sites. Using the real-space dynamical mean field theory description of the strongly correlated quantum-par…
Metallic interfaces between insulating perovskites are often observed in heterostructures combining polar and nonpolar materials. In these systems, the polar discontinuity across the interface may drive an electronic reconstruction inducing free carriers at the interface. Here, we theoretically show that a metallic interface between a Mott- and a band-insulator can also form in the absence of a polar discontinuity. The condition for the appearance of such a metallic state is consistent with the classical Mott criterion: the metallic state is stable if the screening length falls below the effec…
Identifying the fingerprints of the Mott-Hubbard metal-insulator transition may be quite elusive in correlated metallic systems if the analysis is limited to the single particle level. However, our dynamical mean-field calculations demonstrate that the situation changes completely if the frequency dependence of the two-particle vertex functions is considered: The first non-perturbative precursors of the Mott physics are unambiguously identified well inside the metallic regime by the divergence of the local Bethe-Salpeter equation in the charge channel. At low temperatures this occurs in the re…
The frequency-dependent conductivity is studied for the one-dimensional Hubbard model, using a selection rule, the Bethe ansatz, and symmetries associated with conservation laws. For densities where the system is metallic the absorption spectrum has two contributions, a Drude peak at $ω= 0$ separated by a pseudogap from a broad absorption band whose lower edge is characterized by a non-classical critical exponent. Our findings shed new light on the ``far infrared puzzle'' and other optical properties of metallic organic chain compounds.
Magnetic phase diagram and Mott transition are studied in the Hubbard model on the anisotropic triangular lattice at zero temperature and half-filling by the variational cluster approximation, taking into account Néel, 120$^\circ$ Néel, and collinear orderings. Paramagnetic insulator (spin liquid) is realized above the metallic phase around the isotropic point. In general, this spin liquid state, continuously connected with the metallic state, changes to a magnetic state as the on-site Coulomb repulsion $U$ increases, but it persists up to large $U$ limit in a small window between 120$^\circ$ …
We compare the photoluminescence spectra of the low-temperature Mott insulator \etcl (T_{MIT}=40 K) with spectra of metallic κ-(BEDT-TTF)_2Cu[N(CN)_2]Br, which is superconducting below T_c=11.8 K, in the temperature range between 300 and 20 K. In the Mott insulating state of κ-(BEDT-TTF)_2Cu[N(CN)_2]Cl we observe a luminescence band at 1.95 eV due to the recombination of an exciton created by a HOMO-LUMO optical excitation. This luminescence is quenched both in the high-temperature bad metal state of κ-(BEDT-TTF)_2Cu[N(CN)_2]Cl and in metallic κ-(BEDT-TTF)_2Cu[N(CN)_2]Br. The observation of th…
We studied the changes in the electronic structure of V2O3 using a cluster model. The calculations included fluctuations from the coherent band in the metallic phase, and non-local Mott-Hubbard fluctuations in the insulating phase. The incoherent structure is mostly related to the usual ligand screening channel (3d2L). The coherent peak in the metallic phase corresponds to coherent band fluctuations (3d2C). The non-local screened state in the insulating phase (3d2D) appears at higher energies, opening the band gap. The photon energy dependence of the spectra is mostly due to the relative V 3d …
We study theoretically the zero temperature phase transition in two dimensions from a Fermi liquid to a paramagnetic Mott insulator with a spinon Fermi surface. We show that the approach to the bandwidth controlled Mott transition from the metallic side is accompanied by a vanishing quasiparticle residue and a diverging effective mass. The Landau parameters $F^0_s, F^0_a$ also diverge. Right at the quantum critical point there is a sharply defined `critical Fermi surface' but no Landau quasiparticle. The critical point has a $Tln\frac{1}{T}$ specific heat and a non-zero $T = 0$ resistivity. We…
There has been a long-standing debate on the coexistence between itinerant electrons and localized spins in the PdCrO$_2$ delafossite. By means of the charge self-consistent combination of density functional theory and dynamical mean-field theory, it is corroborated that despite overall remarkable metallic response, the CrO$_2$ layers are indeed Mott insulating as suggested by previous experimental work. The resulting ${\bf k}$-resolved spectral function in the paramagnetic phase is in excellent agreement with available photoemission data. Subtle coupling between the itinerant and Mott-localiz…
Motivated by the recent experimental evidence of commensurate surface CDW in Pb/Ge(111) and Sn/Ge(111) $\sqrt{3}$-adlayer structures, as well as by the insulating states found on K/Si(111):B and SiC(0001), we have investigated the role of electron-electron interactions, and also of electron-phonon coupling, on the narrow surface state band originating from the dangling bond orbitals of the adsorbate. We model the problem by an extended two-dimensional Hubbard model at half-filling on a triangular lattice. We include an on-site Hubbard repulsion U and a nearest-neighbor V, plus a long-ranged Co…
The ground-state phase diagram of the half-filled two-leg Hubbard ladder with inter-site Coulomb repulsions and exchange coupling is studied by using the strong-coupling perturbation theory and the weak-coupling bosonization method. Considered here as possible ground states of the ladder model are four types of density-wave states with different angular momentum (s-density-wave state, p-density-wave state, d-density-wave state, and f-density-wave state) and four types of quantum disordered states, i.e., Mott insulating states (S-Mott, D-Mott, S'-Mott, and D'-Mott states, where S and D stand fo…
The dimer Mott insulator $κ$-(BEDT-TTF)$_2$Cu$_2$(CN)$_3$ can be tuned into a metallic and superconducting state upon applying pressure of 1.5 kbar and more. We have performed dielectric spectroscopy measurements (7 kHz to 5 MHz) on $κ$-(BEDT-TTF)$_2$Cu$_2$(CN)$_3$ single crystals as a function of temperature (down to $T=8$ K) and pressure (up to $p=4$ kbar). At ambient conditions, a relaxor-like dielectric behavior develops below 50 K that shifts toward lower temperatures as the crystal is pressurized. Interestingly, a second peak emerges in $\varepsilon_{1}(T)$ around $T=15$ K, which becomes…
We present an ab initio analysis for the ground-state properties of a correlated organic compound $κ$-(BEDT-TTF)2Cu(NCS)2. First, we derive an effective two-dimensional low-energy model from first principles, having short-ranged transfers and short-ranged Coulomb and exchange interactions. Then, we perform many-variable variational Monte Carlo calculations for this model and draw a ground-state phase diagram as functions of scaling parameters for the onsite and off-site interactions. The phase diagram consists of three phases; a paramagnetic metallic phase, an antiferromagnetic (Mott) insulati…
The electronic properties of molecular conductors can be readily varied via physical or chemical pressure as it increases the bandwidth W; this enables crossing the Mott insulator-to-metal phase transition by reducing electronic correlations U/W. Here we introduce an alternative path by increasing the molecular orbitals when partially replacing sulfur by selenium in the constituting bis-(ethylenedithio)-tetrathiafulvalene (BEDT-TTF) molecules of the title compound. We characterize the tuning of the insulating quantum spin liquid state via a Mott transition to the metallic Fermi-liquid state by…
We study the electronic state of the doped Mott-Hubbard insulator within Dynamical Mean Field Theory. The evolution of the finite temperature spectral functions as a function of doping show large redistributions of spectral weight in both antiferromagnetic and paramagnetic phases. In particular, a metallic antiferromagnetic state is obtained with a low frequency Slater-splitted quasiparticle peak coexisting with Hubbard bands. In the high temperature paramagnetic metallic phase, upon reducing doping, the system has a crossover through a ``bad metal'' state characterized by an anomalous shift o…
Motivated by the current interest in the understanding of the Mott insulators away from half filling, observed in many perovskite oxides, we study the Mott metal-insulator transition (MIT) in the doped Hubbard-Holstein model using the Hatree-Fock mean field theory. The Hubbard-Holstein model is the simplest model containing both the Coulomb and the electron-lattice interactions, which are important ingredients in the physics of the perovskite oxides. In contrast to the half-filled Hubbard model, which always results in a single phase (either metallic or insulating), our results show that away …
We investigate by means of the time-dependent Gutzwiller approximation the transport properties of a strongly-correlated slab subject to Hubbard repulsion and connected with to two metallic leads kept at a different electrochemical potential. We focus on the real-time evolution of the electronic properties after the slab is connected to the leads and consider both metallic and Mott insulating slabs. When the correlated slab is metallic, the system relaxes to a steady-state that sustains a finite current. The zero-bias conductance is finite and independent of the degree of correlations within t…
The dynamical mean-field theory (DMFT) is employed to study the Mott transition in the semi-infinite Hubbard model at half-filling and zero temperature. We consider the low-index surfaces of the three-dimensional simple-cubic lattice and systematically vary the model parameters at the very surface. Within the DMFT the problem is self-consistently mapped onto a set of coupled effective impurity models corresponding to the inequivalent layers parallel to the surface. Assuming that the influence of the Hubbard bands on the low-energy quasi-particle resonance can be neglected at the critical point…
We study a bandwidth controlled Mott metal-insulator transition (MIT) between a Fermi liquid metal and a quantum spin-liquid insulator at half-filling in three dimensions (3D). Using a slave rotor approach, and incorporating gauge field fluctuations, we find a continuous MIT and discuss the finite temperature crossovers around this critical point. We show that the specific heat C=T ln ln (1/T) at the MIT and argue that the electrical transport on the metallic side near the transition should exhibit a `conductivity minimum' as a function of temperature. A possible candidate to test these predic…
We present an experimental and theoretical study exploring surface effects on the evolution of the metal-insulator transition in the model Mott-Hubbard compound Cr-doped V$_2$O$_3$. We find a microscopic domain formation that is clearly affected by the surface crystallographic orientation. Using scanning photoelectron microscopy and X-ray diffraction, we find that surface defects act as nucleation centers for the formation of domains at the temperature-induced isostructural transition and favor the formation of microscopic metallic regions. A density functional theory plus dynamical mean field…
We investigate the dynamics of correlated charge carriers in the vicinity of the Mott metal-to-insulator transition in various of the title quasi-two-dimensional organic charge-transfer salts by means of fluctuation (noise) spectroscopy. The observed $1/f$-type fluctuations are quantitatively very well described by a phenomenological model based on the concept of non-exponetial kinetics. The main result is a correlation-induced enhancement of the fluctuations accompanied by a substantial shift of spectral weight to low frequencies close to the Mott critical endpoint. This sudden slowing down o…
