Quantum spin liquids unveil the genuine Mott state.

The localization of charge carriers by electronic repulsion was suggested by Mott in the 1930s to explain the insulating state observed in supposedly metallic NiO. The Mott metal-insulator transition has been subject of intense investigations ever since1-3-not least for its relation to high-temperature superconductivity4. A detailed comparison to real materials, however, is lacking because the pristine Mott state is commonly obscured by antiferromagnetism and a complicated band structure. Here we study organic quantum spin liquids, prototype realizations of the single-band Hubbard model in the absence of magnetic order. Mapping the Hubbard bands by optical spectroscopy provides an absolute measure of the interaction strength and bandwidth-the crucial parameters that enter calculations. In this way, we advance beyond conventional temperature-pressure plots and quantitatively compose a generic phase diagram for all genuine Mott insulators based on the absolute strength of the electronic correlations. We also identify metallic quantum fluctuations as a precursor of the Mott insulator-metal transition, previously predicted but never observed. Our results suggest that all relevant phenomena in the phase diagram scale with the Coulomb repulsion U, which provides a direct link to unconventional superconductivity in cuprates and other strongly correlated materials.

Low-Energy Excitations in Quantum Spin Liquids Identified by Optical Spectroscopy.

The electrodynamic response of organic spin liquids with highly frustrated triangular lattices has been measured in a wide energy range. While the overall optical spectra of these Mott insulators are governed by transitions between the Hubbard bands, distinct in-gap excitations can be identified at low temperatures and frequencies, which we attribute to the quantum-spin-liquid state. For the strongly correlated ß^{'}-EtMe_{3}Sb[Pd(dmit)_{2}]_{2}, we discover enhanced conductivity below 175 cm^{-1}, comparable to the energy of the magnetic coupling J≈250 K. For ω→0, these low-frequency excitations vanish faster than the charge-carrier response subject to Mott-Hubbard correlations, resulting in a dome-shaped band peaked at 100 cm^{-1}. Possible relations to spinons, magnons, and disorder are discussed.

First-Principles-Based Method for Electron Localization: Application to Monolayer Hexagonal Boron Nitride.

We present a first-principles-based many-body typical medium dynamical cluster approximation and density function theory method for characterizing electron localization in disordered structures. This method applied to monolayer hexagonal boron nitride shows that the presence of boron vacancies could turn this wide-gap insulator into a correlated metal. Depending on the strength of the electron interactions, these calculations suggest that conduction could be obtained at a boron vacancy concentration as low as 1.0%. We also explore the distribution of the local density of states, a fingerprint of spatial variations, which allows localized and delocalized states to be distinguished. The presented method enables the study of disorder-driven insulator-metal transitions not only in h-BN but also in other physical materials.

Bad-Metal Behavior Reveals Mott Quantum Criticality in Doped Hubbard Models.

Bad-metal (BM) behavior featuring linear temperature dependence of the resistivity extending to well above the Mott-Ioffe-Regel (MIR) limit is often viewed as one of the key unresolved signatures of strong correlation. Here we associate the BM behavior with the Mott quantum criticality by examining a fully frustrated Hubbard model where all long-range magnetic orders are suppressed, and the Mott problem can be rigorously solved through dynamical mean-field theory. We show that for the doped Mott insulator regime, the coexistence dome and the associated first-order Mott metal-insulator transition are confined to extremely low temperatures, while clear signatures of Mott quantum criticality emerge across much of the phase diagram. Remarkable scaling behavior is identified for the entire family of resistivity curves, with a quantum critical region covering the entire BM regime, providing not only insight, but also quantitative understanding around the MIR limit, in agreement with the available experiments.

Non-Gaussian spatial correlations dramatically weaken localization.

We perform variational studies of the interaction-localization problem to describe the interaction-induced renormalizations of the effective (screened) random potential seen by quasiparticles. Here we present results of careful finite-size scaling studies for the conductance of disordered Hubbard chains at half-filling and zero temperature. While our results indicate that quasiparticle wave functions remain exponentially localized even in the presence of moderate to strong repulsive interactions, we show that interactions produce a strong decrease of the characteristic conductance scale g^{*} signaling the crossover to strong localization. This effect, which cannot be captured by a simple renormalization of the disorder strength, instead reflects a peculiar non-Gaussian form of the spatial correlations of the screened disordered potential, a hitherto neglected mechanism to dramatically reduce the impact of Anderson localization (interference) effects.

Universal quantum criticality at the Mott-Anderson transition.

We present a large N solution of a microscopic model describing the Mott-Anderson transition on a finite-coordination Bethe lattice. Our results demonstrate that strong spatial fluctuations, due to Anderson localization effects, dramatically modify the quantum critical behavior near disordered Mott transitions. The leading critical behavior of quasiparticle wave functions is shown to assume a universal form in the full range from weak to strong disorder, in contrast to disorder-driven non-Fermi liquid ("electronic Griffiths phase") behavior, which is found only in the strongly correlated regime.

Self-organized criticality in glassy spin systems requires a diverging number of neighbors.

We investigate the conditions required for general spin systems with frustration and disorder to display self-organized criticality, a property which so far has been established only for the fully connected infinite-range Sherrington-Kirkpatrick Ising spin-glass model [Phys. Rev. Lett. 83, 1034 (1999)]. Here, we study both avalanche and magnetization jump distributions triggered by an external magnetic field, as well as internal field distributions in the short-range Edwards-Anderson Ising spin glass for various space dimensions between 2 and 8, as well as the fixed-connectivity mean-field Viana-Bray model. Our numerical results, obtained on systems of unprecedented size, demonstrate that self-organized criticality is recovered only in the strict limit of a diverging number of neighbors and is not a generic property of spin-glass models in finite space dimensions.

Topological phase transitions driven by magnetic phase transitions in Fe(x)Bi2Te3 (0≤x≤0.1) single crystals.

We propose a phase diagram for Fe(x)Bi2Te3 (0≤x≤0.1) single crystals, which belong to a class of magnetically bulk-doped topological insulators. The evolution of magnetic correlations from ferromagnetic to antiferromagnetic gives rise to topological phase transitions, where the paramagnetic topological insulator of Bi2Te3 turns into a band insulator with ferromagnetic-cluster glassy behavior around x∼0.025, and it further evolves to a topological insulator with valence-bond glassy behavior, which spans over the region from x∼0.03 up to x∼0.1. This phase diagram is verified by measuring magnetization, magnetotransport, and angle-resolved photoemission spectra with theoretical discussions.

Spin effect on the low-temperature resistivity maximum in a strongly interacting 2D electron system.

The increase in the resistivity with decreasing temperature followed by a drop by more than one order of magnitude is observed on the metallic side near the zero-magnetic-field metal-insulator transition in a strongly interacting two-dimensional electron system in ultra-clean SiGe/Si/SiGe quantum wells. We find that the temperature [Formula: see text], at which the resistivity exhibits a maximum, is close to the renormalized Fermi temperature. However, rather than increasing along with the Fermi temperature, the value [Formula: see text] decreases appreciably for spinless electrons in spin-polarizing (parallel) magnetic fields. The observed behaviour of [Formula: see text] cannot be described by existing theories. The results indicate the spin-related origin of the effect.

Fingerprints of intrinsic phase separation: magnetically doped two-dimensional electron gas.

In addition to Anderson and Mott localization, intrinsic phase separation has long been advocated as the third fundamental mechanism controlling the doping-driven metal-insulator transitions. In electronic system, where charge neutrality precludes global phase separation, it may lead to various inhomogeneous states and dramatically affect transport. Here we theoretically predict the precise experimental signatures of such phase separation-driven metal-insulator transitions. We show that anomalous transport is expected in an intermediate regime around the transition, displaying very strong temperature and magnetic field dependence but very weak density dependence. Our predictions find striking agreement with recent experiments on Mn-doped CdTe quantum wells, a system where we identify the microscopic origin for intrinsic phase separation.

Quantum critical transport near the Mott transition.

We perform a systematic study of incoherent transport in the high temperature crossover region of the half filled one-band Hubbard model. We demonstrate that the family of resistivity curves displays characteristic quantum critical scaling of the form ρ(T, δU) = ρ(c)(T)f(T/T0(δU)), with T0(δU) ~ |δU|(zν), and ρ(c)(T) ~ T. The corresponding ß function displays a "strong coupling" form ß ~ ln(ρ(c)/ρ), reflecting the peculiar mirror symmetry of the scaling curves. This behavior, which is surprisingly similar to some experimental findings, indicates that Mott quantum criticality may be acting as the fundamental mechanism behind the unusual transport phenomena in many systems near the metal-insulator transition.

Quantum ripples in strongly correlated metals.

We study how well-known effects of the long-ranged Friedel oscillations are affected by strong electronic correlations. We first show that their range and amplitude are significantly suppressed in strongly renormalized Fermi liquids. We then investigate the interplay of elastic and inelastic scattering in the presence of these oscillations. In the singular case of two-dimensional systems, we show how the anomalous ballistic scattering rate is confined to a very restricted temperature range even for moderate correlations. In general, our analytical results indicate that a prominent role of Friedel oscillations is relegated to weakly interacting systems.