The Metal-Insulator Transition in the Doubly Degenerate Hubbard Model

A systematic study has been made on the metal-insulator (MI) transition of the doubly degenerate Hubbard model (DHM) in the paramagnetic ground state, by using the slave-boson mean-field theory which is equivalent to the Gutzwiller approximation (GA). For the case of infinite electron-electron interactions, we obtain the analytic solution, which becomes exact in the limit of infinite spatial dimension. On the contrary, the finite-interaction case is investigated by numerical methods with the use of the simple-cubic model with the nearest-neighbor hopping. The mass-enhancement factor, $Z$, is shown to increase divergently as one approaches the integer fillings ($N = 1, 2, 3$), at which the MI transition takes place, $N$ being the total number of electrons. The calculated $N$ dependence of $Z$ is compared with the observed specific-heat coefficient, $\gamma$, of $Sr_{1-x}La_xTiO_3$ which is reported to significantly increase as $x$ approaches unity.