Metal to Wigner-Mott insulator transition in two-leg ladders

Abstract

We study theoretically the quantum phase transition from a metal to a Wigner-Mott insulator at fractional commensurate filling on a two-leg ladder. We show that a continuous transition out of a symmetry-preserving Luttinger liquid metal is possible where the onset of insulating behavior is accompanied by the breaking of the lattice translation symmetry. At fillings $\nu =1/m$ per spin per unit cell, we find that the spin degrees of freedom also acquire a gap at the Wigner-Mott transition for odd integer $m$. In contrast for even integer $m$, the spin sector remains gapless and the resulting insulator is a ladder analog of the two-dimensional spinon surface state. In both cases, a charge neutral spinless mode remains gapless across the Wigner-Mott transition. We discuss physical properties of these transitions, and comment on insights obtained for thinking about continuous Wigner-Mott transitions in two-dimensional systems which are being studied in moire materials.

19 pages, 3 figures, updated upon publication

References in corpus (8)

• Continuous Mott transition in semiconductor moiré superlattices
• Quantum Criticality in Twisted Transition Metal Dichalcogenides
• Critical fermi surfaces and non-fermi liquid metals
• Theory of a continuous Mott transition in two dimensions
• Dielectric catastrophe at the Mott and Wigner transitions in a moiré superlattice
• A continuous Mott transition between a metal and a quantum spin liquid
• Theory of a continuous bandwidth-tuned Wigner-Mott transition
• Metal-Insulator Transition with Charge Fractionalization

Cited by in corpus (5)

• Quantum Melting of Generalized Wigner Crystals in Transition Metal Dichalcogenide Moiré Systems
• Charge and spin properties of a generalized Wigner crystal realized in the moiré WSe${}_2$/WS${}_2$ heterobilayer
• Fractionalization as an alternate to charge ordering in electronic insulators
• Continuous Wigner-Mott transition at $\nu =1/5$
• Lifshitz transition in the phase diagram of two-leg $t$-$J$ ladder systems at low filling