No Arabic abstract
We present a detailed investigation of the specific heat in Ca$_3$(Ru$_{1-x}M_x$)$_2$O$_7$ ($M$ = Ti, Fe, Mn) single crystals. With different dopants and doping levels, three distinct regions are present, including a quasi-2D metallic state with an antiferromagnetic (AFM) order formed by ferromagnetic bilayers (AFM-$b$), a Mott insulating state with G-type AFM order (G-AFM) and a localized state with a mixed AFM-b and G-AFM phase. Our specific heat data provide deep insights into the Mott transitions induced by Ti and Mn dopings. We observed not only an anomalous large mass enhancement but also an additional term in the specific heat i.e. $Cpropto T^2$ in the localized region. The $Cpropto T^2$ term is most likely due to the long-wavelength excitations with both FM and AFM components. A decrease of Debye temperature is observed in the G-type AFM region, indicating a lattice softening associated with the Mott transition.
The magnetic and magnetotransport properties of the Sr3Fe2-xCoxO7-d system (0.2 <= x <= 1.0) were systematically investigated. This oxide system exhibits a giant magnetoresistance (GMR) effect at low temperatures, reaching up to 80% in 7 T at 5 K. Ac-susceptibility measurements show that there exists a strong competition between ferromagnetic (F) and spin glass states, and the balance between these two magnetic states can be controlled by varying cobalt (x) and/or oxygen contents (d). Importantly, the MR effect is closely related to the magnetic property: the development of magnetic disordering leads to enhancement in the negative MR effect. It is suggested that the compound segregates into F clusters embedded in a non-F matrix, being a naturally occurring analog of the artificial granular-GMR materials, as in the doped perovskite cobaltites, La1-xSrxCoO3 (x < 0.18).
We explore the coexistence region in the vicinity of the Mott critical end point employing a compressible cell spin-$1/2$ Ising-like model. We analyze the case for the spin-liquid candidate $kappa$-(BEDT-TTF)$_2$Cu$_2$(CN)$_3$, where close to the Mott critical end point metallic puddles coexist with an insulating ferroelectric phase. Our results are fourfold: $i$) a universal divergent-like behavior of the Gruneisen parameter upon crossing the first-order transition line; $ii$) based on scaling arguments, we show that within the coexistence region, for $any$ system close to the critical point, the relaxation time is entropy-dependent; $iii$) we propose the electric Gruneisen parameter $Gamma_E$, which quantifies the electrocaloric effect; $iv$) we identify the metallic/insulating coexistence region as an electronic Griffiths-like phase. Our findings suggest that $Gamma_E$ governs the dielectric response close to the critical point and that an electronic Griffiths-like phase emerges in the coexistence region.
The metal-insulator transition in correlated electron systems, where electron states transform from itinerant to localized, has been one of the central themes of condensed matter physics for more than half a century. The persistence of this question has been a consequence both of the intricacy of the fundamental issues and the growing recognition of the complexities that arise in real materials, even when strong repulsive interactions play the primary role. The initial concept of Mott was based on the relative importance of kinetic hopping (measured by the bandwidth) and on-site repulsion of electrons. Real materials, however, have many additional degrees of freedom that, as is recently attracting note, give rise to a rich variety of scenarios for a ``Mott transition. Here we report results for the classic correlated insulator MnO which reproduce a simultaneous moment collapse, volume collapse, and metallization transition near the observed pressure, and identify the mechanism as collapse of the magnetic moment due to increase of crystal field splitting, rather than to variation in the bandwidth.
The magnetic ground state of (Sr$_{1-x}$Ca$_x$)$_3$Ru$_2$O$_7$ (0 $leq x leq$ 1) is complex, ranging from an itinerant metamagnetic state (0 $leq x <$ 0.08), to an unusual heavy-mass, nearly ferromagnetic (FM) state (0.08 $< x <$ 0.4), and finally to an antiferromagnetic (AFM) state (0.4 $leq x leq$ 1). In this report we elucidate the electronic properties for these magnetic states, and show that the electronic and magnetic properties are strongly coupled in this system. The electronic ground state evolves from an AFM quasi-two-dimensional metal for $x =$ 1.0, to an Anderson localized state for $0.4 leq x < 1.0$ (the AFM region). When the magnetic state undergoes a transition from the AFM to the nearly FM state, the electronic ground state switches to a weakly localized state induced by magnetic scattering for $0.25 leq x < 0.4$, and then to a magnetic metallic state with the in-plane resistivity $rho_{ab} propto T^alpha$ ($alpha >$ 2) for $0.08 < x < 0.25$. The system eventually transforms into a Fermi liquid ground state when the magnetic ground state enters the itinerant metamagnetic state for $x < 0.08$. When $x$ approaches the critical composition ($x sim$ 0.08), the Fermi liquid temperature is suppressed to zero Kelvin, and non-Fermi liquid behavior is observed. These results demonstrate the strong interplay between charge and spin degrees of freedom in the double layered ruthenates.
We study the behavior of fermion liquid defined on hexagonal and triangular lattices with short-range repulsion at half filling. In strong coupling limit the Mott-Hubbard phase state is present, the main peculiarity of insulator state is a doubled cell of the lattices. In the insulator state at half filling fermions with momenta $k$ and $k+pi$ are coupled via the effective $lambda$-field, the gap in the spectrum of quasi-particle excitations opens and the Mott phase transition is occured at a critical value of the one-site Hubbard repulsion~$U_c$. $U_c=3.904$ and $U_c=5.125$ are calculated values for hexagonal and triangular lattices, respectively. Depending on the magnitude of the short-range repulsion, the gap in the spectrum and the energy of the ground state are calculated. The proposed approach is universal; it is implemented for an arbitrary dimension and symmetry of the lattice for fermions models with short-range repulsion.