Electronic structure of Mott insulators

Abstract

Mott insulators are identified here with ordinary magnetic insulators. The insulating gap, local moment, and effective spin hamiltonian aspects are qualitatively explained by means of a novel set of solutions of the Hartree-Fock equations. The apparent conflict between Bloch's theorem and localized-electron phenomenology is thereby resolved in an elementary manner. This Hartree-Fock approach also sheds considerable light on the physical mechanisms responsible for the associated metal-insulator (Mott) and other related phase transitions, as observed in V₂O₃ and several other materials. With some generalizations and refinements, this theoretical picture is shown to also account semiquantitatively for a number of detailed properties of NiO and CoO, two of the most extensively studied Mott insulator materials. A wide variety of experimental data for NiO is surveyed in order to determine reasonable values for its effective Hubbard hamiltonian parameters, suitably generalized for the 3d electrons. The problems of formally deriving effective spin hamiltonians for macroscopic magnetic insulator systems are also carefully examined. The old non-orthogonality catastrophe is fully resolved by means of a degenerate (open-shell) analogue of the linked cluster perturbation expansion of Brueckner and Goldstone. Although many quantitative issues remain, these results indicate that there is now a reasonably adequate conceptual understanding of the Mott insulating state.