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Register a new userMicroscopic description of insulator-metal transition in high-pressure oxygen
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Unusual metallic states involving breakdown of the standard Fermi-liquid picture of long-lived quasiparticles in well-defined band states emerge at low temperatures near correlation-driven Mott transitions. Prominent examples are ill-understood metallic states in $d$- and $f$-band compounds near Mott-like transitions. Finding of superconductivity in solid O$_{2}$ on the border of an insulator-metal transition at high pressures close to 96~GPa is thus truly remarkable. Neither the insulator-metal transition nor superconductivity are understood satisfactorily. Here, we undertake a first step in this direction by focussing on the pressure-driven insulator-metal transition using a combination of first-principles density-functional and many-body calculations. We report a striking result: the finding of an orbital-selective Mott transition in a pure $p$-band elemental system. We apply our theory to understand extant structural and transport data across the transition, and make a specific two-fluid prediction that is open to future test. Based thereupon, we propose a novel scenario where soft multiband modes built from microscopically coexisting itinerant and localized electronic states are natural candidates for the pairing glue in pressurized O$_{2}$.
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Recently discovered class of 2D materials based on transition metal phosphorous trichalcogenides exhibit antiferromagnetic ground state, with potential applications in spintronics. Amongst them, FePS$ _{3} $ is a Mott insulator with a band gap of $sim$ 1.5 eV. This study using Raman spectroscopy along with first-principles density functional theoretical analysis examines the stability of its structure and electronic properties under pressure. Raman spectroscopy reveals two phase transitions at 4.6 GPa and 12 GPa marked by the changes in pressure coefficients of the mode frequencies and the number of symmetry allowed modes. FePS$_3$ transforms from the ambient monoclinic C2/m phase with a band gap of 1.54 eV to another monoclinic C2/m (band gap of 0.1 eV) phase at 4.6 GPa, followed by another transition at 12 GPa to the metallic trigonal P-31m phase. Our work complements recently reported high pressure X-ray diffraction studies.
Metal-ion doping can effectively regulate the metal-insulator transition temperature in $mathrm{VO}_2$. Experiments found that the pentavalent and hexavalent ion doping dramatically reduces the transition temperature while the trivalent ion doping increases the transition temperature and induces intermediate phases. Based on the phase-field model of the metal-insulator transition in $mathrm{VO}_2$ we developed previously, we formulate a Landau potential of the metal-ion-doped $mathrm{VO}_2$ taking account of the effects of doping on the electron correlation and lattice structure. The effect of metal-ion doping on the lattice structure is accounted for in a phenomenological way. Using the Landau potential, we calculate the temperature-dopant-concentration phase diagrams of $mathrm{VO}_2$ doped with various metal ions consistent with the experiments and provide explanation to the different behaviors of different metal-ion doping. The phenomenological theory can provide estimations of phase diagrams of $mathrm{VO}_2$ doped with other metal ions.
Assembling transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDCs) at the two-dimensional (2D) limit is a promising approach for tailoring emerging states of matter such as superconductivity or charge density waves (CDWs). Single-layer (SL) VSe$_2$ stands out in this regard because it exhibits a strongly enhanced CDW transition with a higher transition temperature compared to the bulk in addition to an insulating phase with an anisotropic gap at the Fermi level, causing a suppression of anticipated 2D ferromagnetism in the material. Here, we investigate the interplay of electronic and lattice degrees of freedom that underpin these electronic phases in SL VSe$_2$ using ultrafast pump-probe photoemission spectroscopy. In the insulating state, we observe a light-induced closure of the energy gap on a timescale of 480 fs, which we disentangle from the ensuing hot carrier dynamics. Our work thereby reveals that the phase transition in SL VSe$_2$ is driven by electron-lattice coupling and demonstrates the potential for controlling electronic phases in 2D materials with light.
The interaction of coexisting structural instabilities in multiferroic materials gives rise to intriguing coupling phenomena and extraordinarily rich phase diagrams, both in bulk materials and strained thin films. Here we investigate the multiferroic BiMnO3 with its peculiar 6s2 electrons and four interacting mechanisms: electric polarity, octahedra tilts, magnetism, and cooperative Jahn-Teller distortion. We have probed structural transitions under high pressure by synchrotron x-ray diffraction and Raman spectroscopy up to 60 GPa. We show that BiMnO3 displays under pressure a rich sequence of five phases with a great variety of structures and properties, including a metallic phase above 53 GPa and, between 37 and 53 GPa, a strongly elongated monoclinic phase that allows ferroelectricity, which contradicts the traditional expectation that ferroelectricity vanishes under pressure. Between 7 and 37 GPa, the Pnma structure remains remarkably stable but shows a reduction of the Jahn-Teller distortion in a way that differs from the behavior observed in the archetypal orthorhombic Jahn-Teller distorted perovskite LaMnO3.
Rutile ($R$) phase VO$_2$ is a quintessential example of a strongly correlated bad-metal, which undergoes a metal-insulator transition (MIT) concomitant with a structural transition to a V-V dimerized monoclinic phase below T$_{MIT} sim 340K$. It has been experimentally shown that one can control this transition by doping VO$_2$. In particular, doping with oxygen vacancies ($V_O$) has been shown to completely suppress this MIT {em without} any structural transition. We explain this suppression by elucidating the influence of oxygen-vacancies on the electronic-structure of the metallic $R$ phase VO$_2$, explicitly treating strong electron-electron correlations using dynamical mean-field theory (DMFT) as well as diffusion Monte Carlo (DMC) flavor of quantum Monte Carlo (QMC) techniques. We show that $V_O$s tend to change the V-3$d$ filling away from its nominal half-filled value, with the $e_{g}^{pi}$ orbitals competing with the otherwise dominant $a_{1g}$ orbital. Loss of this near orbital polarization of the $a_{1g}$ orbital is associated with a weakening of electron correlations, especially along the V-V dimerization direction. This removes a charge-density wave (CDW) instability along this direction above a critical doping concentration, which further suppresses the metal-insulator transition. Our study also suggests that the MIT is predominantly driven by a correlation-induced CDW instability along the V-V dimerization direction.
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