# Domain Wall Conductivity with strong Coulomb interaction of two-dimensional massive Dirac Electrons in the Organic Conductor $\alpha$-(BEDT-TTF)$_2$I$_3$

## TL;DR

This study models domain wall conductivity in a pressurized organic conductor with massive Dirac electrons, revealing metallic conduction along domain walls and explaining experimental transport gaps through numerical analysis.

## Contribution

It introduces a semi-infinite lattice model for interacting Dirac electrons, demonstrating domain wall metallicity and its impact on transport and optical properties in charge-ordered phases.

## Key findings

- Activation gap smaller than optical gap near criticality
- Metallic conduction occurs along domain walls
- Low-energy shoulder in optical conductivity linked to bound states

## Abstract

Motivated by the results of recent transport and optical conductivity studies, we propose a semi-infinite two-dimensional lattice model for interacting massive Dirac electrons in the pressurized organic conductor $\alpha$-(BEDT-TTF)$_2$I$_3$, and address the problem of domain wall conductivity in a charge-ordered insulating phase under realistic experimental conditions. Using the extended Hubbard model at a mean field level, we present results of extensive numerical studies around the critical region of the model, reporting on the resistivity and optical conductivity calculated by means of the Nakano-Kubo formula. We find that the activation gap extracted from the resistivity data can be much smaller than the optical gap in the critical region, which is induced by metallic conduction along an one-dimensional domain wall emerging at the border of two charge-ordered ferroelectric regions with opposite polarizations. The data are consistent with the observed transport gap in real $\alpha$-(BEDT-TTF)$_2$I$_3$ samples that is reduced remarkably faster than the optical gap upon suppressing charge order with pressure. Our optical conductivity also reveals an additional shoulder-like structure at low energy inside the gap, which is argued to be directly relevant to the metallic bound states residing on the domain wall.