Article abstract
Nature Materials 7, 198 - 202 (2008)
Published online: 3 February 2008 | doi:10.1038/nmat2115
Subject Categories: Magnetic materials | Computation, modelling and theory
Collapse of magnetic moment drives the Mott transition in MnO
Jan Kune
1,2,
Alexey V. Lukoyanov3,
Vladimir I. Anisimov4,
Richard T. Scalettar5
&
Warren E. Pickett5
Abstract
The metal–insulator transition in correlated electron systems, where electron states transform from itinerant to localized, has been one of the central themes of condensed-matter physics for more than half a century. The persistence of this question has been a consequence both of the intricacy of the fundamental issues and the growing recognition of the complexities that arise in real materials, when strong repulsive interactions play the primary role. The initial concept of Mott was based on the relative importance of kinetic hopping (measured by the bandwidth) and onsite repulsion of electrons. Real materials, however, have many further degrees of freedom that, as is recently attracting note, give rise to a rich variety of scenarios for a 'Mott transition'. Here, we report results for the classic correlated insulator MnO that reproduce a simultaneous moment collapse, volume collapse and metallization transition near the observed pressure, and identify the mechanism as collapse of the magnetic moment due to an increase of crystal-field splitting, rather than to variation in the bandwidth.
- Theoretical Physics III, Center for Electronic Correlations and Magnetism, Institute of Physics, University of Augsburg, Augsburg 86135, Germany
- Institute of Physics, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, Cukrovarnická 10, 162 53 Praha 6, Czech Republic
- Ural State Technical University-UPI, 620002 Yekaterinburg, Russia
- Institute of Metal Physics, Russian Academy of Sciences-Ural Division, 620041 Yekaterinburg GSP-170, Russia
- Department of Physics, University of California Davis, Davis, California 95616, USA
Correspondence to: Jan Kune1,2
e-mail: jan.kunes@physik.uni-augsburg.de
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