Microscopic description of insulator-metal transition in high-pressure oxygen
Abstract Unusual metallic states involving breakdown of the standard Fermi-liquid picture of long-lived quasiparticles in well-defined band states emerge at low temperatures near correlation-driven Mott transitions. Prominent examples are ill-understood metallic states in d- and f-band compounds nea...
Guardado en:
| Autores principales: | , , |
|---|---|
| Formato: | article |
| Lenguaje: | EN |
| Publicado: |
Nature Portfolio
2017
|
| Materias: | |
| Acceso en línea: | https://doaj.org/article/b55c5188dcb341c29e7c45b40aa16259 |
| Etiquetas: |
Agregar Etiqueta
Sin Etiquetas, Sea el primero en etiquetar este registro!
|
| Sumario: | Abstract Unusual metallic states involving breakdown of the standard Fermi-liquid picture of long-lived quasiparticles in well-defined band states emerge at low temperatures near correlation-driven Mott transitions. Prominent examples are ill-understood metallic states in d- and f-band compounds near Mott-like transitions. Finding of superconductivity in solid O2 on the border of an insulator-metal transition at high pressures close to 96 GPa is thus truly remarkable. Neither the insulator-metal transition nor superconductivity are understood satisfactorily. Here, we undertake a first step in this direction by focussing on the pressure-driven insulator-metal transition using a combination of first-principles density-functional and many-body calculations. We report a striking result: the finding of an orbital-selective Mott transition in a pure p-band elemental system. We apply our theory to understand extant structural and transport data across the transition, and make a specific two-fluid prediction that is open to future test. Based thereupon, we propose a novel scenario where soft multiband modes built from microscopically coexisting itinerant and localized electronic states are natural candidates for the pairing glue in pressurized O2. |
|---|