Universality of liquid-gas Mott transitions at finite temperatures

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that the finite temperature Mott transition belongs to the Ising universality class, clarifying experimental conflicts and analyzing the effects of disorder and energy density on critical behavior.

Contribution

It provides a unified explanation for conflicting experiments on Mott criticality and highlights the role of energy density and disorder in the transition's universality class.

Findings

Mott transition is in the Ising universality class

Global conductivity depends on energy density near critical point

Weak disorder affects the size of the critical region

Abstract

We explain in a consistent manner the set of seemingly conflicting experiments on the finite temperature Mott critical point, and demonstrate that the Mott transition is in the Ising universality class. We show that, even though the thermodynamic behavior of the system near such critical point is described by an Ising order parameter, the global conductivity can depend on other singular observables and, in particular, on the energy density. Finally, we show that in the presence of weak disorder the dimensionality of the system has crucial effects on the size of the critical region that is probed experimentally.