Correlation driven Mott-insulator-to-metal transition

Abstract: We study transport properties of the half-filled two-dimensional (2D) Hubbard model with spatially varying interactions, where a pattern of interacting and non-interacting sites is formed. We use Determinantal Quantum Monte Carlo method to calculate the double occupation, effective hopping and Drude weight. These data point to two phase transitions, driven by fermionic correlations. The first is the expected metal to a Mott insulating state. The second one, is an exotic transition from a Mott insulating state to a highly anisotropic metal, that takes place at large values of the fermion-fermion interaction. This second transition occurs when the layers formed by the spatially varying interactions decouple due to the suppression of the hopping between interacting and non-interacting sites, leading to fermionic transport along the non-interacting ones.