150 Ch.

4 Mott Transition and Hubbard Model

trons. Just counting the number of electrons in the unit cell would lead
us to expect that the antiferromagnetic-paramagnetic transition is ac-
companied by an insulator-to-metal transition. However, COOremains
a staunch insulator also in its paramagnetic phase. You might expect
that this must mean the eventual demise of the independent-electron ap-
proach. However, it is just imaginable that the finding of an insulating
paramagnetic state may still be described in the independent-electron
framework as an effect of strong disorder6. Arguments of this kind may
never end. We prefer to follow a different path: to show that strong
electron-electron interaction can cause a metal-insulator transition in a
half-filled band, and that correlation effects are important both on the
metallic, and on the insulating, side of the transition. The correlation-
driven metal-insulator transition is the Mott transition.

4.2 Mott Transition

Let us invoke a well-known Gedankenexperiment to convince ourselves
that

0 correlation effects necessarily arise, and

a the consideration of electron correlation effects provides the clear-
est and most economical way to understand phenomena like the
insulating nature of COO.

Let us consider the tight binding picture of the band structure of

Na, a solid with one atom per unit cell (Fig. 4.1).
All atomic levels give rise to bands, of which only the 3.9 band
achieves a sizeable width. The deeper-lying bands are very narrow and
completely filled. The 3s band is half-filled with one electronlunit cell
and thus Na is expected to be a metal. This statement should, according
to band theory, continue to hold as we (in thought) increase the lattice
constant from its equilibrium value a0 to larger interatomic separations.
The 3s band becomes quickly narrower but it is always half-filled, so Na
should remain a metal.
‘The exchange fields of the randomly oriented spins add up to a *Idly fluctuating
potential. A current-carrying electron which tries to pass through the crystal will be
strongly scattered by this and may become Anderson-localized.