The gas-liquid transition is a first-order transition terminating at a finite-temperature critical point with diverging density fluctuations. Mott transition, a metal-insulator transition driven by Coulomb repulsion between electrons, has been identified with this textbook transition. However, the critical temperature of the Mott transition can be suppressed, resulting in unusual quantum criticality. It accounts for non-Fermi-liquid-like properties, and strongly momentum dependent quasiparticles as in many materials near the Mott insulator. Among all, the mode-coupling theory of the density fluctuations supports d-wave superconductivity at the order of a hundred Kelvin for relevant parameters of the copper oxide superconductors.
The gas-liquid transition is a first-order transition terminating at a finite-temperature critical point with diverging density fluctuations. Mott transition, a metal-insulator transition driven by Coulomb repulsion between electrons, has been identified with this textbook transition. However, the critical temperature of the Mott transition can be suppressed, resulting in unusual quantum criticality. It accounts for non-Fermi-liquid-like properties, and strongly momentum dependent quasiparticles as in many materials near the Mott insulator. Among all, the mode-coupling theory of the density fluctuations supports d-wave superconductivity at the order of a hundred Kelvin for relevant parameters of the copper oxide superconductors.
Divergent carrier-density fluctuations equivalent to the critical opalescence of gas-liquid transitions emerge around a metal-insulator critical point at a finite temperature. In contrast to the gas-liquid transitions, however, the critical temperature can be lowered to zero, which offers a challenging quantum phase transition. We present a microscopic description of such quantum critical phenomena in two dimensions. The conventional scheme of phase transitions by Ginzburg, Landau and Wilson is violated and an unconventional universality appears. It offers a clear insight into the criticalities of metal-insulator transitions associated with Mott or charge-order transitions. Fermi degeneracy involving the diverging density fluctuations generates emergent phenomena near the endpoint of the first-order transition and must shed new light on remarkable phenomena found in correlated metals like unconventional cuprate superconductors. It indeed accounts for otherwise puzzling criticality of the Mott transition recently discovered in an organic conductor. We propose to measure enhanced dielectric fluctuations at small wavenumbers by accurate probes.
Abstract: The metal–insulator transition (MIT) constitutes one of the most profound and persistent problems in condensed matter physics, sitting at the intersection of electronic structure theory, many-body physics, and emergent quantum phenomena. Conventional band theory, which successfully classifies materials as metals or insulators according to the filling of their electronic bands, fails dramatically when confronted with a class of compounds transition metal oxides chief among them that ought to be metallic by band-counting arguments yet are robustly insulating in the laboratory. The resolution of this paradox required abandoning the independent-electron picture entirely and recognizing that strong Coulomb repulsion between electrons can, by itself, drive localization. This insight, formalized by Mott and later distilled into the Hubbard model, established correlation-driven insulation as a phenomenon distinct from band insulation. The present paper offers a theoretical exploration of the MIT problem, tracing its conceptual development from the Mott criterion through the Hubbard Hamiltonian, the Brinkman–Rice scenario of quasiparticle mass divergence, and the watershed development of dynamical mean-field theory (DMFT), which rendered the Mott transition quantitatively tractable for the first time. We argue that the competition between the electronic bandwidth and the on-site interaction encoded in the ratio U/W provides the unifying organizing principle for the field. Building toward the modern frontier, we examine how the Mott transition connects to quantum phase transitions and quantum criticality, where zero-temperature instabilities governed by quantum rather than thermal fluctuations produce non-Fermi-liquid behavior and anomalous scaling. Case studies of vanadium oxides, rare-earth nickelates, and doped cuprates illustrate the diversity and subtlety of real correlated materials. We conclude that the MIT remains a central and unresolved problem whose continued study is increasingly entangled with the development of quantum materials and quantum technologies. Keywords: Metal–Insulator Transition; Mott Insulator; Strongly Correlated Electrons; Hubbard Model; DMFT; Quantum Criticality; Quantum Materials; Condensed Matter Physics
Phenomenological theory of the Mott transition is presented. When the critical temperature of the Mott transition is much higher than the quantum degeneracy temperature, the transition is essentially described by the Ising universality class. Below the critical temperature, phase separation or first-order transition occurs. However, if the critical point is involved in the Fermi degeneracy region, a marginal quantum critical point appears at zero temperature. The originally single Mott critical point generates subsequent many unstable fixed points through various Fermi surface instabilities induced by the Mott criticality characterized by the diverging charge susceptibility or doublon susceptibility. This occurs in marginal quantum-critical region. Charge, magnetic and superconducting instabilitites compete severely under these critical charge fluctuations. The quantum Mott transition triggers multi-furcating criticality, which goes beyond the conventional concept of multicriticality in quantum phase transitions. Near the quantum Mott transition, the criticality generically drives growth of inhomogeneous structure in the momentum space with singular points of flat dispersion on the Fermi surface. The singular points determine the quantum dynamics of the Mott transition by the dynamical exponent z=4. We argue that many of filling-control Mott transitions are classified to this category. Recent numerical results as well as experimental results on strongly correlated systems including transition metal oxides, organic materials and 3He layer adsorbed on a substrate are consistently analyzed especially in two-dimensional systems.
We study superfluidity in strongly correlated systems by focusing three features as follows. First, interplay between superfluidity and other order parameters near quantum critical points is studied. The onset positions of the order parameters with or without superconductivity determines how they interact with each other. For the spin density wave (SDW) transition, we find that the quantum critical point shifts by order |∆|, where ∆ is pairing amplitude, so that the region of SDW order is smaller in the superconductor than in the metal. This shift is larger than the |∆|2 shift predicted by theories of competing orders which ignore Fermi surface effects. Second, we study a doped antiferromagnetic Mott insulator motivated by copper based high temperature superconductors. Based on spin and charge fractionalization, the algebraic charge liquid phase whose bosonic spinons have energy gap but fermionic holons form Fermi surfaces and its superconductivity are studied. We show fluctuations of local SDW order orientation lead to d-wave superconductivity, and its quantum critical pairing mechanisms are investigated. Also, a theory of bound states between spinons and holons is studied. We show that the fractionalization induces a doubling electron-like quasiparticles, which naturally induces the fractionalized Fermi liquid. The bound state theory describes exotic properties of the underdoped Cuprates such as “nodal-antinodal dichotomy” at a mean field level description. At last, we study superfluidity of fermions in optical lattices near the Feshbach resonance. Due to divergence of scattering length at the resonance, universality is observed and characteristics of superfluidity has been studied. We extend such universal properties by considering superfluid-insulator transition with an even integer number of fermions per unit cell. The resulting insulator interpolates between a band insulator of fermions and a Mott insulator of fermion pairs.
Introduction In this chapter we study metal–insulator transitions which occur due to correlations between the charge carriers. This quantum phase transitions results from the competition between kinetic energy and Coulomb repulsion where the latter has the tendency to localise the electrons. The simplest model which describes this competition is the one-band Hubbard model with its two energy scales, the bandwidth W and the Coulomb repulsion U between electrons of opposite spins on the same site. For a fixed density of electrons, n = 1; as the ratio U/W increases, we expect to find a zero-temperature phase transition from a metallic state to an insulator where the electrons are frozen at the lattice sites. The method employed here to investigate this transition is the Gutzwiller approach (Gutzwiller, 1965). This is a variational method which played an important role in providing a framework for the ideas of Mott on the problem of the metal–insulator transition (Mott, 1974). On the metallic side of the transition, this approach describes a metal with renormalised Fermi liquid parameters, essentially with enhanced effective mass and uniform susceptibility. This is the so-called highly correlated electron gas (Brinkman and Rice, 1970) for which the metal oxide V 2 O 3 is the prototype system. In the insulating side, Gutzwiller's approximation yields a noninteracting system of localised electrons. This insulating phase is incompressible , i.e. has zero compressibility and infinite zero temperature susceptibility. The latter is not a consequence of interactions but simply due to the divergence of the Curie susceptibility, χ ∝ 1 /T , of non-interacting moments at T = 0. Then, in Gutzwiller's approach the transition is from a paramagnetic metal to a paramagnetic insulator. We will continue using the designation Mott transition to describe this type of phase transition where the insulating phase has no long-range magnetic order. In real systems, most frequently, localisation due to interactions is accompanied by the appearance of antiferromagnetic order.
The Mott critical point between a metal and a correlated insulator has usually been studied via density or spin density bosonic mode fluctuations according to the standard Ginzburg-Landau-Wilson phase transition paradigm. A moment's reflection leads to increasing doubts that such an approach should work as the transition is nonmagnetic, voiding the relevance of spin density modes. Charge density modes are irrelevelant since the long range Coulomb interaction leads to a large plasmon gap and their incompressibility. In solidarity with these doubts, recent measurements of the Mott critical point in low dimensional organic materials yield critical exponents in violent diasagreement with the bosonic mode criticality lore. We propose that fermionic fluctuations control the behavior of the Mott transition. The transition thus has an intrinsic quantum aspect despite being a finite temperature phase transition. We develop this hitherto unexplored physics, obtain experimental predictions and find agreement with one of the novel unexplained experimental exponents. We conclude that this Mott transition corresponds to a new universality class of finite temperature critical points that contains quantum effects and cannot be accounted for by conventional Ginzburg-Landau-Wilson wisdom.