Collapse of magnetic moment drives the Mott transition in MnO

Collapse of magnetic moment drives the Mott transition in MnO.

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...

Magnetic Moment Collapse-Driven Mott Transition in MnO

Jan Kuneš, Alexey V. Lukoyanov, Vladimir I. Anisimov, Richard T. Scalettar, and Warren E. Pickett 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, 620...

Supplementary Information: Magnetic-Collapse Driven Mott Transition in MnO

Pressure-driven magnetic moment collapse in the ground state of MnO

The zero temperature Mott transition region in antiferromagnetic, spin S = 52 MnO is probed using the correlated band theory LSDA + U method. The first transition encountered is an insulator–insulator volume collapse within the rocksalt structure that is characterized by an unexpected Hund’s rule violating ‘spin-flip’ moment collapse. This spin-flip to S = 12 takes fullest advantage of the anis...

First-order isostructural Mott transition in highly compressed MnO.

We present evidence for an isostructural, first-order Mott transition in MnO at 105+/-5 GPa, based on high-resolution x-ray emission spectroscopy and angle-resolved x-ray diffraction data. The pressure-induced structural and spectral changes provide a coherent picture of MnO phase transitions from paramagnetic B1 to antiferromagnetic distorted B1 at 30 GPa, to paramagnetic B8 at 90 GPa, and to ...