Theory of metal-insulator transitions in graphite under high magnetic field

TL;DR

This paper develops a theoretical framework explaining metal-insulator transitions in graphite under high magnetic fields, identifying excitonic insulator phases with spin nematic order and surface state reconstructions.

Contribution

It introduces a model for electron-hole interactions in graphite, predicts excitonic insulator phases, and explains re-entrant transitions and surface state phenomena under high magnetic fields.

Findings

Identification of excitonic insulator phases with spin nematic order.

Re-entrant insulator-metal transition explained by quantum fluctuations.

Prediction of surface state reconstruction into a gapless Dirac cone.

Abstract

Graphite under high magnetic field exhibits consecutive metal-insulator (MI) transitions as well as re-entrant insulator-metal (IM) transition in the quasi-quantum limit at low temperature. In this paper, we identify the low-$T$ insulating phases as excitonic insulators with spin nematic orderings. We first point out that graphite under the relevant field regime is in the charge neutrality region, where electron and hole densities compensate each other. Based on this observation, we introduce interacting electron models with electron pocket(s) and hole pocket(s) and enumerate possible umklapp scattering processes allowed under the charge neutrality. Employing effective boson theories for the electron models and renormalization group (RG) analyses for the boson theories, we show that there exist critical interaction strengths above which the umklapp processes become relevant and the system enter excitonic insulator phases with long-range order of spin superconducting phase fields ("spin nematic excitonic insulator"). We argue that, when a pair of electron and hole pockets get smaller in size, a quantum fluctuation of the spin superconducting phase becomes larger and destabilizes the excitonic insulator phases, resulting in the re-entrant IM transitions. We also show that an odd-parity excitonic pairing between the electron and hole pockets reconstruct surface chiral Fermi arc states of electron and hole into a 2-dimensional helical surface state with a gapless Dirac cone. We discuss field- and temperature-dependences of in-plane resistance by surface transports via these surface states.