We study the transition from paramagnetic metal to paramagnetic insulator by finite temperature Quantum Monte-Carlo simulations for the 2D Hubbard model at half-filling. Working at the moderately high temperature T=0.33*t where the spin correlation length has dropped to 1.5 lattice spacings, and scanning the interaction strength U, we observe an unambiguous metal-insulator transition with onset at U_c=4t. In the metallic phase there are no indications of any `correlation narrowing' of the band width, nor for any decrease of spectral weight at the Fermi energy. The Mott-Hubbard gap opens gradually with increasing U and is accompanied by the formation of side bands near the Fermi energy. In the first stages of gap formation the gap opens at (pi,0), reminiscent of the `pseudogap' phenomenology in cuprate superconductors.
Thermodynamic and dynamical properties of filling-control metal-insulator transition (MIT) in the Hubbard model are studied by the operator projection method, especially in two dimensions. This is a non-perturbative analytic approach to many-body systems. The present theory incorporates the Mott-Hubbard, Brinkman-Rice and Slater pictures of the MIT into a unified framework, together with reproducing low-energy narrow band arising from spin-charge fluctuations. At half filling, single-particle spectra
A(ω,k) show formation of two Hubbard bands and their antiferromagnetic shadows separated by a Mott gap in the plane of energy
ω and momentum
k with lowering temperatures. These four bands produce splitting to two low-energy narrow bands and two SDW-like bands in the dispersion. Near half filling, the low-energy narrow band persists at low temperatures. This narrow band has a particularly weak dispersion and large weights around
(π,0) and
(0,π) momenta. The velocity of these low-energy excitations is shown to vanish towards the MIT, indicating the mass divergence as in the Brinkman-Rice picture, but most prominently around
(π,0) and
(0,π) with strong momentum dependence. This reflects the suppression of the coherence near the MIT. Main structures in
A(ω,k) show remarkable similarities to quantum Monte-Carlo results in two dimensions as well as in the one-dimensional Hubbard model. The charge compressibility appears to diverge with decreasing doping concentration in both one and two dimensions in agreement with the exact and quantum Monte-Carlo results. We also discuss implications of the flat dispersion formed near the Fermi level to the observations in high-$\Tc$ cuprate superconductors.