English

Mott transition in multi-orbital systems

Strongly Correlated Electrons 2007-05-23 v1

Abstract

Metal insulator transitions driven by local Coulomb interactions are among the most fascinating phenomena in condensed matter physics. They occur in a large variety of transition metal compounds. Most of these strongly correlated materials consist of valence bands derived from electronic d shells where intra- and inter-orbital Coulomb interactions are equally important and where the crystal structure splits the valence bands into narrow and wide subbands. A fundamental question is whether these systems exhibit a common Mott transition, implying all subbands to be either metallic or insulating, or successive orbital dependent transitions, implying a coexistence region with metallic and insulating behavior present in different subbands. Using the dynamical mean field theory we show that inter-orbital Coulomb interactions lead to a single Mott transition. Nevertheless, the subbands exhibit more or less strongly correlated excitation spectra in the metallic phase and different band gaps in the insulating phase.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.cond-mat/0306312,
  title  = {Mott transition in multi-orbital systems},
  author = {A. Liebsch},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:cond-mat/0306312},
  year   = {2007}
}

Comments

4 pages, 3 figures