5.

5 Correlated Insulators 247

dispersion. In Fig. 5.10, band broadening is ascribed to the quasiparti-

cle excitations but not to the strongly correlated ground state.

Figure 5.11: The classification of correlated insulators in the parameter plane

of the p d two-band model. For U > Apd a charge transfer insulator, while for
Apd > u a Mott insulator is expected. weakly correlated systems (u < Wdd) are
d-type met&. A high-lying, broad pband (Wpd > Apd) overlaps the upper Hubbard
subband, resulting in a metal with ptype holes.

The diagram shown in Fig. 5.11 serves to classify the transition

metal compounds into the broad classes of Mott insulators, and charge
transfer insulators [462, 3481. Formally, both activation energies (5.81)
and (5.82) can become negative, marking the transition to a weakly
correlated &-metal,or a correlated phole metal, respectively.
The knowledge about the relative sizes of Apd and U is important in
superexchange theory (Sec. 5.2), and for understanding the results of
various spectroscopies. A rule of thumb says that the early transition
metals (Ti, V, Cr) tend to form Mott insulators, while towards the end
of the 3d series (Ni, Cu) we are likely to find charge transfer insulators.
Apparently, COO belongs to the intermediate regime where Apd N U.
The sharp insulator-insulator boundary shown if Fig. 5.11 is clearly ar-
tificial (it is not a phase boundary!); we had better speak about a broad
transition region between the two kinds of insulator [462]. In contrast,
the (very schematically drawn) metal-insulator boundaries belong to