Vanadium sesquioxide V2O3 is considered a textbook example of Mott-Hubbard physics. In this paper we present an extended optical study of its whole temperature/doping phase diagram as obtained by doping the pure material with M=Cr or Ti atoms (V1-xMx)2O3. We reveal that its thermodynamically stable metallic and insulating phases, although macroscopically equivalent, show very different low-energy electrodynamics. The Cr and Ti doping drastically change both the antiferromagnetic gap and the paramagnetic metallic properties. A slight chromium content induces a mesoscopic electronic phase separation, while the pure compound is characterized by short-lived quasiparticles at high temperature. This study thus provides a new comprehensive scenario of the Mott-Hubbard physics in the prototype compound V2O3.
@article{arxiv.1504.07279,
title = {Optical properties of V2O3 in its whole phase diagram},
author = {I. Lo Vecchio and L. Baldassarre and F. D'Apuzzo and O. Limaj and D. Nicoletti and A. Perucchi and L. Fan and P. Metcalf and M. Marsi and S. Lupi},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1504.07279},
year = {2015}
}