The Mott Metal-Insulator Transition

Since the subject is far from being settled, different opinions on specific aspects of the Mott transition still persist. For this purpose the Hubbard model and some of its derivatives are best suited. Little do we reliably know about the Mott transition, and we are far from a complete understanding of the metal --insulator transition due to electr- electron interactions. This book naturally embodies my own understanding of the phenomenon, inspired by the work of the late Sir Kevill Mott. Exact solutions not only allow us to test our basic ideas, but also help to assess the quality of approxin~ate theories for correlated electron systems. The Hubbard model describes a Mott transition with a mere minimum of tunable par- eters, and various exact statements and even exact solutions exist in certain limiting cases. In his view, a Motk insulator displays a gap for charge-carrying excitations due to electron cowelations, whose importance is expressed by the presence of local magnetic moments regardless of whether or not they are ordered. The purpose of this book is twofold: first, to give a detailed presen- tion of the basic theoretical concopts for Mott insulators and, second, to test these ideas against the results from model calculations. 1). Mott summarized his basic ideas on the subject in his wonderful book Metal--Insulator nansitions that first appeared in 1974 11.

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The Mott Metal-Insulator Transition