We report that the thermally-induced Mott transition in vanadium sesquioxide shows critical-slowing-down and enhanced variance ('critical opalescence') of the order parameter fluctuations measured through low-frequency resistance-noise spectroscopy. Coupled with the observed increase of also the phase-ordering time, these features suggest that the strong abrupt transition is controlled by a critical-like singularity in the hysteretic metastable phase. The singularity is identified with the spinodal point and is a likely consequence of the strain-induced long-range interaction.
@article{arxiv.2301.08254,
title = {Critical Slowing Down at the Abrupt Mott Transition: When the First-Order Phase Transition Becomes Zeroth-Order and Looks Like Second-Order},
author = {Satyaki Kundu and Tapas Bar and Rajesh Kumble Nayak and Bhavtosh Bansal},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2301.08254},
year = {2023}
}