Abstract The bandwidth-tuned Wigner-Mott transition is an interaction-driven phase transition from a generalized Wigner crystal to a Fermi liquid. Because the transition is generally accompanied by both magnetic and charge-order instabilities, it remains unclear if a continuous Wigner-Mott transition exists. Here, we demonstrate bandwidth-tuned metal-insulator transitions at fixed fractional fillings of a MoSe 2 /WS 2 moiré superlattice. The bandwidth is controlled by an out-of-plane electric field. The dielectric response is probed optically with the 2s exciton in a remote WSe 2 sensor layer. The exciton spectral weight is negligible for the metallic state with a large negative dielectric constant. It continuously vanishes when the transition is approached from the insulating side, corresponding to a diverging dielectric constant or a ‘dielectric catastrophe’ driven by the critical charge dynamics near the transition. Our results support the scenario of continuous Wigner-Mott transitions in two-dimensional triangular lattices and stimulate future explorations of exotic quantum phases in their vicinities.
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Low-temperature dielectric anomaly arising from electronic phase separation at the Mott insulator-metal transition
Abstract Coulomb repulsion among conduction electrons in solids hinders their motion and leads to a rise in resistivity. A regime of electronic phase separation is expected at the first-order phase transition between a correlated metal and a paramagnetic Mott insulator, but remains unexplored experimentally as well as theoretically nearby T = 0. We approach this issue by assessing the complex permittivity via dielectric spectroscopy, which provides vivid mapping of the Mott transition and deep insight into its microscopic nature. Our experiments utilizing both physical pressure and chemical substitution consistently reveal a strong enhancement of the quasi-static dielectric constant ε 1 when correlations are tuned through the critical value. All experimental trends are captured by dynamical mean-field theory of the single-band Hubbard model supplemented by percolation theory. Our findings suggest a similar ’dielectric catastrophe’ in many other correlated materials and explain previous observations that were assigned to multiferroicity or ferroelectricity.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1822258
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10296013
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- npj Quantum Materials
- Volume:
- 6
- Issue:
- 1
- ISSN:
- 2397-4648
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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Abstract Atomic many-body phase transitions and quantum criticality have recently attracted much attention in non-standard optical lattices. Here we perform an experimental study of finite temperature superfluid transition of bosonic atoms confined in a three dimensional triangular lattice, whose structure can be continuously deformed to dimensional crossover regions including quasi-one and two dimensions. This non-standard lattice system provides a versatile platform to investigate many-body correlated phases. For the three dimensional case, we find that the finite temperature superfluid transition agrees quantitatively with the Gutzwiller mean field theory prediction, whereas tuning towards reduced dimensional cases, both quantum and thermal fluctuation effects are more dramatic, and the experimental measurement for the critical point becomes strongly deviated from the mean field theory. We characterize the fluctuation effects in the whole dimension crossover process. Our experimental results imply strong many-body correlations in the system beyond mean field description, paving a way to study quantum criticality near Mott-superfluid transition in finite temperature dimension-crossover lattices.
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In this paper we critically discuss several examples of two-dimensional electronic systems displaying interaction-driven metal-insulator transitions of the Mott (or Wigner–Mott) type, including dilute two-dimension electron gases (2DEG) in semiconductors, Mott organic materials, as well as the recently discovered transition-metal dichalcogenide (TMD) moiré bilayers. Remarkably similar behavior is found in all these systems, which is starting to paint a robust picture of Mott criticality. Most notable, on the metallic side a resistivity maximum is observed whose temperature scale vanishes at the transition. We compare the available experimental data on these systems to three existing theoretical scenarios: spinon theory, Dynamical Mean Field Theory (DMFT) and percolation theory. We show that the DMFT and percolation pictures for Mott criticality can be distinguished by studying the origins of the resistivity maxima using an analysis of the dielectric response.more » « less
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Abstract Vanadium dioxide (VO2) is a well‐studied Mott‐insulator because of the very abrupt physical property switching during its semiconductor‐to‐metal transition (SMT) around 341 K (68 °C). In this work, through novel oxide‐metal nanocomposite designs (i.e., Au:VO2and Pt:VO2), a very broad range of SMT temperature tuning from
≈ 323.5 to≈ 366.7 K has been achieved by varying the metallic secondary phase in the nanocomposites (i.e., Au:VO2and Pt:VO2thin films, respectively). More surprisingly, the SMTT ccan be further lowered to≈ 301.8 K (near room temperature) by reducing the Au particle size from 11.7 to 1.7 nm. All the VO2nanocomposite thin films maintain superior phase transition performance, i.e., large transition amplitude, very sharp transition, and narrow width of thermal hysteresis. Correspondingly, a twofold variation of the complex dielectric function has been demonstrated in these metal‐VO2nanocomposites. The wide range physical property tuning is attributed to the band structure reconstruction at the metal‐VO2phase boundaries. This demonstration paved a novel approach for tuning the phase transition property of Mott‐insulating materials to near room temperature transition, which is important for sensors, electrical switches, smart windows, and actuators. -
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A correlated material in the vicinity of an insulator–metal transition (IMT) exhibits rich phenomenology and a variety of interesting phases. A common avenue to induce IMTs in Mott insulators is doping, which inevitably leads to disorder. While disorder is well known to create electronic inhomogeneity, recent theoretical studies have indicated that it may play an unexpected and much more profound role in controlling the properties of Mott systems. Theory predicts that disorder might play a role in driving a Mott insulator across an IMT, with the emergent metallic state hosting a power-law suppression of the density of states (with exponent close to 1; V-shaped gap) centered at the Fermi energy. Such V-shaped gaps have been observed in Mott systems, but their origins are as-yet unknown. To investigate this, we use scanning tunneling microscopy and spectroscopy to study isovalent Ru substitutions in Sr3(Ir1-xRux)2O7(0 ≤
x ≤ 0.5) which drive the system into an antiferromagnetic, metallic state. Our experiments reveal that many core features of the IMT, such as power-law density of states, pinning of the Fermi energy with increasing disorder, and persistence of antiferromagnetism, can be understood as universal features of a disordered Mott system near an IMT and suggest that V-shaped gaps may be an inevitable consequence of disorder in doped Mott insulators.
- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1038/s41535-020-00307-0
