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Register a new userMicroscopic and Spectroscopic Evidence for a Slater Metal-Insulator Transition in Sr2IrO4
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Layered 5d transition metal oxides (TMOs) have attracted significant interest in recent years because of the rich physical properties induced by the interplay between spin-orbit coupling, bandwidth and on-site Coulomb repulsion. In Sr2IrO4, this interplay opens a gap near the Fermi energy and stabilizes a Jeff=1/2 spin-orbital entangled insulating state at low temperatures. Whether this metal-insulating transition (MIT) is Mott-type (electronic-correlation driven) or Slater-type (magnetic-order driven) has been under intense debate. We address this issue via spatially resolved imaging and spectroscopic studies of the Sr2IrO4 surface using scanning tunneling microscopy/spectroscopy (STM/S). The STS results clearly illustrate the opening of the (~150-250 meV) insulating gap at low temperatures, in qualitative agreement with our density-functional theory (DFT) calculations. More importantly, the measured temperature dependence of the gap width coupled with our DFT+dynamical mean field theory (DMFT) results strongly support the Slater-type MIT scenario in Sr2IrO4. The STS data further reveal a pseudogap structure above the Neel temperature, presumably related to the presence of antiferromagnetic fluctuations.
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The magnetically driven metal-insulator transition (MIT) was predicted by Slater in the fifties. Here a long-range antiferromagnetic (AF) order can open up a gap at the Brillouin electronic band boundary regardless of the Coulomb repulsion magnitude. However, while many low-dimensional organic conductors display evidence for an AF driven MIT, in three-dimensional (3D) systems the Slater MIT still remains elusive. We employ terahertz and infrared spectroscopy to investigate the MIT in the NaOsO3 3D antiferromagnet. From the optical conductivity analysis we find evidence for a continuous opening of the energy gap, whose temperature dependence can be well described in terms of a second order phase transition. The comparison between the experimental Drude spectral weight and the one calculated through Local Density Approximation (LDA) shows that electronic correlations play a limited role in the MIT. All the experimental evidence demonstrates that NaOsO3 is the first known 3D Slater insulator.
We present a temperature-dependent x-ray absorption (XAS) and resonant elastic x-ray scattering (REXS) study of the metal-insulator transition (MIT) in Sr3(Ru1-xMnx)2O7. The XAS results reveal that the MIT drives the onset of local antiferromagnetic correlations around the Mn impurities, a precursor of the long-range antiferromagnetism detected by REXS at T_order<T_MIT. This establishes that the MIT is of the Mott-type (electronic correlations) as opposed to Slater-type (magnetic order). While this behavior is induced by Mn impurities, the (1/4,1/4,0) order exists for a wide range of Mn concentrations, and points to an inherent instability of the parent compound.
We present an angle-resolved photoemission study of the electronic structure of the three-dimensional pyrochlore iridate Nd2Ir2O7 through its magnetic metal-insulator transition. Our data reveal that metallic Nd2Ir2O7 has a quadratic band, touching the Fermi level at the Gamma point, similarly to that of Pr2Ir2O7. The Fermi node state is, therefore, a common feature of the metallic phase of the pyrochlore iridates. Upon cooling below the transition temperature, this compound exhibits a gap opening with an energy shift of quasiparticle peaks like a band gap insulator. The quasiparticle peaks are strongly suppressed, however, with further decrease of temperature, and eventually vanish at the lowest temperature, leaving a non-dispersive flat band lacking long-lived electrons. We thereby identify a remarkable crossover from Slater to Mott insulators with decreasing temperature. These observations explain the puzzling absence of Weyl points in this material, despite its proximity to the zero temperature metal-insulator transition.
We investigate the electronic structure of Chromium Nitride (CrN) across the first-order magneto-structural transition at T_N ~ 286 K. Resonant photoemission spectroscopy shows a gap in the 3d partial density of states at the Fermi level and an On-site Coulomb energy U ~ 4.5 eV, indicating strong electron-electron correlations. Bulk-sensitive high resolution (6 meV) laser photoemission reveals a clear Fermi edge indicating an antiferromagnetic metal below T_N. Hard x-ray Cr 2p core-level spectra show T-dependent changes across T_N which originate from screening due to coherent states as substantiated by cluster model calculations using the experimentally observed U. The electrical resistivity confirms an insulator above T_N (E_g ~ 70 meV) which becomes a disordered metal below T_N. The results indicate CrN transforms from a correlated insulator to an antiferromagnetic metal, coupled to the magneto-structural transition.
Despite decades of experimental and theoretical efforts, the origin of metal-insulator transitions (MIT) in strongly-correlated materials is one of the main longstanding problems in condensed matter physics. An archetypal example is V2O3, where electronic, structural and magnetic phase transitions occur simultaneously. This remarkable concomitance makes the understanding of the origin of the MIT a challenge due to the many degrees of freedom at play. In this work, we demonstrate that magnetism plays the key dominant role. By acting on the magnetic degree of freedom, we reveal an anomalous behaviour of the magnetoresistance of V2O3, which provides strong evidence that the origin of the MIT in V2O3 is the opening of an antiferromagnetic gap in the presence of strong electronic correlations.
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