Imaging the itinerant-to-localized transmutation of electrons across the metal-to-insulator transition in V${}_2$O${}_3$

Abstract

In solids, strong repulsion between electrons can inhibit their movement and result in a "Mott" metal-to-insulator transition (MIT), a fundamental phenomenon whose understanding has remained a challenge for over 50 years. A key issue is how the wave-like itinerant electrons change into a localized-like state due to increased interactions. However, observing the MIT in terms of the energy- and momentum-resolved electronic structure of the system, the only direct way to probe both itinerant and localized states, has been elusive. Here we show, using angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES), that in V${}_2$O${}_3$ the temperature-induced MIT is characterized by the progressive disappearance of its itinerant conduction band, without any change in its energy-momentum dispersion, and the simultaneous shift to larger binding energies of a quasi-localized state initially located near the Fermi level.

Main Text (4 figures) and Supplementary Information (12 figures)

References in corpus (12)

• Mott transition in VO2 revealed by infrared spectroscopy and nano-imaging
• A precise method for visualizing dispersive features in image plots
• Electrodynamics of the vanadium oxides VO2 and V2O3
• Universal Fabrication of Two-Dimensional Electron Systems in Functional Oxides
• A Microscopic View on the Mott transition in Chromium-doped V2O3
• Enhanced Crystal Field Splitting and Orbital Selective Coherence by Strong Correlations in V_2O_3
• Effect of Crystal-Field Splitting and Inter-Band Hybridization on the Metal-Insulator Transitions of Strongly Correlated Systems
• Photoemission study of (V${}_{1-x}$M${}_x$)${}_2$O${}_3$ (M=Cr, Ti)
• Two-dimensional electron system at the magnetically tunable EuO/SrTiO${}_3$ interface
• Optical properties of V2O3 in its whole phase diagram
• Fermi Surface of Metallic V${}_2$O${}_3$ from Angle-Resolved Photoemission: Mid-level Filling of $e_g^{\pi }$ Bands
• Two-dimensional electron systems in ATiO3 perovskites (A = Ca, Ba, Sr): control of orbital hybridization and order

Cited by in corpus (6)

• The fate of quasiparticles at high-temperature
• Disentangling structural and electronic properties in V${}_2$O${}_3$ thin films: a genuine non-symmetry breaking Mott transition
• Electronic band structure of Ti2O3 thin films studied by angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy
• Interface-induced collective phase transition in VO2-based bilayers studied by layer selective spectroscopy
• Self-Consistent Coulomb Interactions from Constrained Dynamical Mean-Field Theory
• Confinement-Induced Isosymmetric Metal-Insulator Transition in Ultrathin Epitaxial V2O3 Films