Energy-lowering symmetry breaking creates a flat-band insulator in paramagnetic Nb3Cl8

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Xiong, Jia-Xin, Zhang, Xiuwen, Zunger, Alex
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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author Xiong, Jia-Xin
Zhang, Xiuwen
Zunger, Alex
author_facet Xiong, Jia-Xin
Zhang, Xiuwen
Zunger, Alex
contents Ordinary band structure calculations of quantum materials often incorrectly predicted metallic, instead of insulating electronic structure, motivating Mott-Hubbard strong electron correlation as a gapping mechanism. More recently, allowing the formation of local structural symmetry breaking motifs in otherwise ordinary band theory was shown to lower the total energy while predicting insulating gaps when they are observed. An important counter example was recently pointed out whereby the flat band formed in Nb3Cl8 by symmetry breaking is by itself partially occupied, thus failing to account for the observed insulating state. It is shown here that a generalized symmetry breaking involving the cooperative structural and magnetic effects produces in mean-field-like density functional theory an energy lowering insulating phase.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2408_00145
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Energy-lowering symmetry breaking creates a flat-band insulator in paramagnetic Nb3Cl8
Xiong, Jia-Xin
Zhang, Xiuwen
Zunger, Alex
Materials Science
Strongly Correlated Electrons
Ordinary band structure calculations of quantum materials often incorrectly predicted metallic, instead of insulating electronic structure, motivating Mott-Hubbard strong electron correlation as a gapping mechanism. More recently, allowing the formation of local structural symmetry breaking motifs in otherwise ordinary band theory was shown to lower the total energy while predicting insulating gaps when they are observed. An important counter example was recently pointed out whereby the flat band formed in Nb3Cl8 by symmetry breaking is by itself partially occupied, thus failing to account for the observed insulating state. It is shown here that a generalized symmetry breaking involving the cooperative structural and magnetic effects produces in mean-field-like density functional theory an energy lowering insulating phase.
title Energy-lowering symmetry breaking creates a flat-band insulator in paramagnetic Nb3Cl8
topic Materials Science
Strongly Correlated Electrons
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2408.00145