arXiv subjects

Pak Ki Henry Tsang

Publications and source records attributed to Pak Ki Henry Tsang.

4 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2025

Relevance of long-range screening in Mott transition examined via a hydrogen lattice

The Mott transition, a metal-insulator transition due to strong electronic interaction, is observed in many materials without an accompanying change of system symmetry. An important open question in Mott's proposal is the role of long-range screening, whose drastic change across the quantum phase transition may self-consistently make the transition more abrupt, toward a first-order one. Here we investigate this effect in a model system of hydrogen atoms in a cubic lattice, using charge self-consistent dynamical mean-field theory that incorporates approximately the long-range interaction within the density functional treatment. We found that the system is well within the charge-transfer regime and that the charge-transfer gap intimately related to the Mott transition closes smoothly instead. This indicates that the long-range screening does not play an essential role in this prototypical example. This finding can be understood from the fact that the obtained insulating phase in this model system is driven by strong local interaction, and the transition is associated with the closing of charge-transfer gap. Contrary to Mott's length scale argument, such energetic competition between kinetic energy and local interaction is thus insensitive to long-range screening.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2023

Doping a Wigner-Mott insulator: Exotic charge orders in transition-metal dichalcogenide moiré heterobilayers

The moiré pattern induced by lattice mismatch in transition-metal dichalcogenide heterobilayers causes the formation of flat bands, where interactions dominate the kinetic energy. At fractional fillings of the flat valence band, the long-range electron interactions then induce Wigner-Mott crystals. In this Letter we investigate the nontrivial electronic phases appearing away from commensurate fillings. Here, competing phases arise that are either characterized as doped Wigner-Mott charge transfer insulators or alternatively, a novel state with frozen charge order yet is conducting: the 'electron slush'. We propose that an extremely spatially inhomogeneous local density of states can serve as a key signature of the electron slush.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2022

Disorder-dominated quantum criticality in moiré bilayers

Moiré bilayer materials have recently attracted much attention following the discovery of various correlated insulating states at specific band fillings. Here we discuss the metal-insulator transitions (MITs) that have been observed in the same devices, but at fillings far from the strongly correlated regime dominated by Mott-like physics, displaying many similarities to other examples of disorder-dominated MITs. We propose a minimal theoretical model describing the interplay of interactions and disorder, which able to capture most experimental trends observed on several devices.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2021

Quantum-embedding description of the Anderson lattice model with the ghost Gutzwiller Approximation

We present benchmark calculations of the Anderson lattice model based on the recently-developed "ghost Gutzwiller approximation". Our analysis shows that, in some parameters regimes, the predictions of the standard Gutzwiller approximation can be incorrect by orders of magnitude for this model. We show that this is caused by the inability of this method to describe simultaneously the Mott physics and the hybridization between correlated and itinerant degrees of freedom (whose interplay often governs the metal-insulator transition in real materials). Finally, we show that the ghost Gutzwiller approximation solves this problem, providing us with results in remarkable agreement with dynamical mean field theory throughout the entire phase diagram, while being much less computationally demanding. We provide an analytical explanation of these findings and discuss their implications within the context of ab-initio computation of strongly-correlated matter.

cond-mat.str-el↗