No Arabic abstract
Electron tunneling experiments are used to probe Coulomb correlation effects in the single-particle density-of-states (DOS) of boron-doped silicon crystals near the critical density of the metal-insulator transition (MIT). At low energies, a DOS measurement distinguishes between insulating and metallic samples with densities 10 to 15 % on either side of the MIT. However, at higher energies the DOS of both insulators and metals show a common behavior, increasing roughly as the square-root of energy. The observed characteristics of the DOS can be understood using a classical treatment of Coulomb interactions combined with a phenomenological scaling ansatz to describe the length-scale dependence of the dielectric constant as the MIT is approached from the insulating side.
We report a simulation of the metal-insulator transition in a model of a doped semiconductor that treats disorder and interactions on an equal footing. The model is analyzed using density functional theory. From a multi-fractal analysis of the Kohn-Sham eigenfunctions, we find $ u approx 1.3$ for the critical exponent of the correlation length. This differs from that of Andersons model of localization and suggests that the Coulomb interaction changes the universality class of the transition.
We consider the orthogonality catastrophe at the Anderson Metal-Insulator transition (AMIT). The typical overlap $F$ between the ground state of a Fermi liquid and the one of the same system with an added potential impurity is found to decay at the AMIT exponentially with system size $L$ as $F sim exp (- langle I_Arangle /2)= exp(-c L^{eta})$, where $I_A$ is the so called Anderson integral, $eta $ is the power of multifractal intensity correlations and $langle ... rangle$ denotes the ensemble average. Thus, strong disorder typically increases the sensitivity of a system to an additional impurity exponentially. We recover on the metallic side of the transition Andersons result that fidelity $F$ decays with a power law $F sim L^{-q (E_F)}$ with system size $L$. This power increases as Fermi energy $E_F$ approaches mobility edge $E_M$ as $q (E_F) sim (frac{E_F-E_M}{E_M})^{- u eta},$ where $ u$ is the critical exponent of correlation length $xi_c$. On the insulating side of the transition $F$ is constant for system sizes exceeding localization length $xi$. While these results are obtained from the mean value of $I_A,$ giving the typical fidelity $F$, we find that $I_A$ is widely, log normally, distributed with a width diverging at the AMIT. As a consequence, the mean value of fidelity $F$ converges to one at the AMIT, in strong contrast to its typical value which converges to zero exponentially fast with system size $L$. This counterintuitive behavior is explained as a manifestation of multifractality at the AMIT.
Artificially created two-dimensional (2D) interfaces or structures are ideal for seeking exotic phase transitions due to their highly tunable carrier density and interfacially enhanced many-body interactions. Here, we report the discovery of a metal-insulator transition (MIT) and an emergent gapped phase in the metal-semiconductor interface that is created in 2H-MoTe$_2$ via alkali-metal deposition. Using angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy, we found that the electron-phonon coupling is strong at the interface as characterized by a clear observation of replica shake-off bands. Such strong electron-phonon coupling interplays with disorder scattering, leading to an Anderson localization of polarons which could explain the MIT. The domelike emergent gapped phase could then be attributed to a polaron extended state or phonon-mediated superconductivity. Our results demonstrate the capability of alkali-metal deposition as an effective method to enhance the many-body interactions in 2D semiconductors. The surface-doped 2H-MoTe$_2$ is a promising candidate for realizing polaronic insulator and high-$T_c$ superconductivity.
We use the dynamical mean-field approximation to study singularities in the self-energy and a two-particle irreducible vertex induced by the metal-insulator transition of the disordered Falicov-Kimball model. We set general conditions for the existence of a critical metal-insulator transition caused by a divergence of the imaginary part of the self-energy. We calculate explicitly the critical behavior of the self-energy for the symmetric and asymmetric disorder distributions. We demonstrate that the metal-insulator transition is preceded by a pole in a two-particle irreducible vertex. We show that unlike the singularity in the self-energy the divergence in the irreducible vertex does not lead to non-analyticities in measurable physical quantities. We reveal universal features of the critical metal-insulator transition that are transferable also to the Mott-Hubbard transition in the models of the local Fermi liquid.
By studying the optical conductivity of BSLCO and YCBCO, we show that the metal-to-insulator transition (MIT) in these hole-doped cuprates is driven by the opening of a small gap at low T in the far infrared. Its width is consistent with the observations of Angle-Resolved Photoemission Spectroscopy in other cuprates, along the nodal line of the k-space. The gap forms as the Drude term turns into a far-infrared absorption, whose peak frequency can be approximately predicted on the basis of a Mott-like transition. Another band in the mid infrared softens with doping but is less sensitive to the MIT.