Surface effects in doping a Mott insulator

TL;DR

This study explores how surface effects influence doping in a Mott insulator, revealing that charge transfer and correlation effects lead to a dead layer formation at the surface, with implications for surface electronic properties.

Contribution

It demonstrates how surface spectral evolution in doped Mott insulators is affected by charge transfer and correlation effects, using an embedding approach within dynamical mean field theory.

Findings

A dead layer forms at the surface near the Mott insulating phase.

Surface spectral properties are strongly affected by hopping integral modifications.

Charge transfer and correlation effects are key to surface behavior in doped Mott insulators.

Abstract

The physics of doping a Mott insulator is investigated in the presence of a solid-vacuum interface. Using the embedding approach for dynamical mean field theory we show that the change in surface spectral evolution in a doped Mott insulator is driven by a combination of charge transfer effects and enhanced correlation effects. Approaching a Mott insulating phase from the metallic side, we show that a dead layer forms at the surface of the solid, where quasiparticle amplitudes are exponentially suppressed. Surface correlation and charge transfer effects can be strongly impacted by changes of the hopping integrals at the surface.