Related papers: What makes an insulator different from a metal?
The orbital motion of electrons in a three-dimensional solid can generate a pseudoscalar magnetoelectric coupling $\theta$, a fact we derive for the single-particle case using a recent theory of polarization in weakly inhomogeneous…
Many body localization (MBL) represents a unique physical phenomenon, providing a testing ground for exploring thermalization, or more precisely its failure. Here we characterize the MBL regime geometrically by the many-body quantum metric…
Cs3C60 is a correlated superconductor under pressure, but an insulator under ambient conditions. The mechanism causing this insulating behavior is the combination of Mott localization and the dynamic Jahn-Teller effect. We show evidence…
Localization of wavefunctions is arguably the most familiar effect of disorder in quantum systems. It has been recently argued [[V. Khemani, R. Nandkishore, and S. L. Sondhi, Nature Physics, 11, 560 (2015)] that, contrary to naive…
Electron spin takes critical role in almost all novel phenomena discovered in modern condensed matter physics (High-temperature superconductivity, Kondo effect, Giant Magnetoresistance, topological insulator, quantum anomalous Hall effect,…
A heterostructure of a semi-infinite metal and a Mott insulator is considered. It is supposed that both materials have an identical lattice spacing and hopping integrals and differ in the Hubbard repulsion which is negligible in the metal…
Two-dimensional moir\'e materials have emerged as the most versatile platforms for realizing quantum phases of electrons. Here, we explore the stability origins of correlated states in WSe2/WS2 moir\'e superlattices. We find that ultrafast…
Topological insulators have emerged as a major topic of condensed matter physics research with several novel applications proposed. Although there are now a number of established experimental examples of materials in this class, all of them…
Two-dimensional (2D) strongly correlated electron systems underlie many of the most important phenomena in contemporary condensed matter physics, including the Quantum Hall Effect (QHE), ``high T_c'' superconductivity, and possible exotic…
We show that fully-localized, three-dimensional, time-reversal-symmetry-broken insulators do not belong to a single phase of matter but can realize topologically distinct phases that are labelled by integers. The phase transition occurs…
A conducting 1D line or 2D plane inside (or on the surface of) an insulator is considered.Impurities displace the charges inside the insulator. This results in a long-range fluctuating electric field acting on the conducting line (plane).…
We investigate the electronic and structural properties of CuO, which shows significant deviations from the trends obeyed by other transition-metal monoxides. Using an extended Hubbard corrective functional, we uncover an orbitally ordered…
The ground state properties of a paramagnetic Mott insulator are investigated in the presence of an external electrical field using the inhomogeneous Gutzwiller approximation for a single band Hubbard model in a slab geometry. The metal…
The excitonic insulator is an elusive electronic phase exhibiting a correlated excitonic ground state. Materials with such a phase are expected to have intriguing properties such as excitonic high-temperature superconductivity. However,…
Delocalization problem for a two-dimensional non-interacting electron system is studied under a random magnetic field. With the presence of a random magnetic field, the Hall conductance carried by each eigenstate can become nonzero and…
For some insulators we present a procedure to determine an electronic density leading to a lower energy than that of the Kohn-Sham ground state.
The competition between electron localization and de-localization in Mott insulators underpins the physics of strongly-correlated electron systems. Photo-excitation, which re-distributes charge between sites, can control this many-body…
Using a three-frequency one-dimensional kicked rotor experimentally realized with a cold atomic gas, we study the transport properties at the critical point of the metal-insulator Anderson transition. We accurately measure the…
We introduce a theoretical model to scrutinize the conductivity of small polarons in one-dimensional disordered systems, focusing on two crucial --as will be demonstrated-- factors: the density of states and the spatial extent of the…
We investigate the metal-to-insulator phase transition driven by the density-density electronic interaction in the quarter-filled model on a cubic lattice with two orbitals split by a crystal field. We show that a systematic consideration…