No Arabic abstract
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 $Tlnfrac{1}{T}$ specific heat and a non-zero $T = 0$ resistivity. We predict an interesting {em universal resistivity jump} in the residual resistivity at the critical point as the transition is approached from the metallic side. The crossovers out of the critical region are also studied. Remarkably the initial crossover out of criticality on the metallic side is to a Marginal Fermi Liquid metal. At much lower temperatures there is a further crossover into the Landau Fermi liquid. The ratio of the two crossover scales vanishes on approaching the critical point. Similar phenomena are found in the insulating side. The filling controlled Mott transition is also studied. Implications for experiments on the layered triangular lattice organic material $kappa-(ET)_2Cu_2(CN)_3$ are discussed.
We have studied the impact of non-local electronic correlations at all length scales on the Mott-Hubbard metal-insulator transition in the unfrustrated two-dimensional Hubbard model. Combining dynamical vertex approximation, lattice quantum Monte-Carlo and variational cluster approximation, we demonstrate that scattering at long-range fluctuations, i.e., Slater-like paramagnons, opens a spectral gap at weak-to-intermediate coupling -- irrespectively of the preformation of localized or short-ranged magnetic moments. This is the reason, why the two-dimensional Hubbard model is insulating at low enough temperatures for any (finite) interaction and no Mott-Hubbard transition is observed.
The infinite dimensional half-filled Hubbard model can be mapped exactly with no additional constraint onto a model of free fermions coupled in a $Z_2$ gauge-invariant manner to auxiliary Ising spins in a transverse field. In this slave-spin representation, the zero-temperature insulator-to-metal transition translates into spontaneous breaking of the local $Z_2$ gauge symmetry, which is not forbidden in infinite dimensions, thus endowing the Mott transition of an order parameter that is otherwise elusive in the original fermion representation. We demonstrate this interesting scenario by exactly solving the effective spin-fermion model by dynamical mean-field theory both at zero and at finite temperature.
The evolution of a Landau Fermi liquid into a nonmagnetic Mott insulator with increasing electronic interactions is one of the most puzzling quantum phase transitions in physics. The vicinity of the transition is believed to host exotic states of matter such as quantum spin liquids, exciton condensates and unconventional superconductivity. Semiconductor moire materials realize a highly controllable Hubbard model simulator on a triangular lattice, providing a unique opportunity to drive a metal-insulator transition (MIT) via continuous tuning of the electronic interactions. Here, by electrically tuning the effective interaction strength in MoTe2/WSe2 moire superlattices, we observe a continuous MIT at a fixed filling of one electron per unit cell. The existence of quantum criticality is supported by the scaling behavior of the resistance, a continuously vanishing charge-gap as the critical point is approached from the insulating side, and a diverging quasiparticle effective mass from the metallic side. We also observe a smooth evolution of the low-temperature magnetic susceptibility across the MIT and find no evidence of long-range magnetic order down to ~ 5% of the Curie-Weiss temperature. The results signal an abundance of low-energy spinful excitations on the insulating side that is further corroborated by the presence of the Pomeranchuk effect on the metallic side. Our results are consistent with the universal critical theory of a continuous MIT from a Landau Fermi liquid to a nonmagnetic Mott insulator in two dimensions.
We discuss the solution of the Mott transition problem in a fully frustrated lattice with a semicircular density of states in the limit of infinite dimensions from the point of view of a Landau free energy functional. This approach provides a simple relation between the free energy of the lattice model and that of its local description in terms of an impurity model. The character of the Mott transition in infinite dimensions, (as reviewed by Georges Kotliar Krauth and Rozenberg, RMP 68, 1996, 13) follows simply from the form of the free energy functional and the physics of quantum impurity models. At zero temperature, below a critical value of the interaction U, a Mott insulator with a finite gap in the one particle spectrum, becomes unstable to the formation of a narrow band near the Fermi energy. Using the insights provided by the Landau approach we answer questions raised about the dynamical mean field solution of the Mott transition problem, and comment on its applicability to three dimensional transition metal oxides.
More than half a century after first being proposed by Sir Nevill Mott, the deceptively simple question of whether the interaction-driven electronic metal-insulator transition may be continuous remains enigmatic. Recent experiments on two-dimensional materials suggest that when the insulator is a quantum spin liquid, lack of magnetic long-range order on the insulating side may cause the transition to be continuous, or only very weakly first order. Motivated by this, we study a half-filled extended Hubbard model on a triangular lattice strip geometry. We argue, through use of large-scale numerical simulations and analytical bosonization, that this model harbors a continuous (Kosterlitz-Thouless-like) quantum phase transition between a metal and a gapless spin liquid characterized by a spinon Fermi surface, i.e., a spinon metal. These results may provide a rare insight into the development of Mott criticality in strongly interacting two-dimensional materials and represent one of the first numerical demonstrations of a Mott insulating quantum spin liquid phase in a genuinely electronic microscopic model.