Collective Charge Excitation in a Dimer Mott Insulating System

TL;DR

This paper investigates collective charge excitations in a dimer Mott insulator, revealing their presence in different phases and their observability via optical spectra, with implications for understanding experimental results.

Contribution

It introduces a theoretical analysis of collective charge excitations considering internal dimer degrees of freedom, connecting theory with recent experiments.

Findings

Collective charge excitations exist in both non-polar DM and polar CO phases.

The excitation mode softens at the phase boundary.

The mode is observable in optical conductivity spectra with specific polarization.

Abstract

Charge dynamics in a dimer Mott insulating system, where a non-polar dimer-Mott (DM) phase and a polar charge-ordered (CO) phase compete with each other, are studied. In particular, collective charge excitations are analyzed in the three different models where the internal-degree of freedom in a dimer is taken into account. Collective charge excitation exists both in the non-polar DM phase and the polar CO phase, and softens in the phase boundary. This mode is observable by the optical conductivity spectra where the light polarization is parallel to the electric polarization in the polar CO phase. Connections between the present theory and the recent experimental results in kappa-(BEDT-TTF)2Cu2(CN)3 are discussed.