Quantum Spin Liquids and the Metal-Insulator Transition in Doped Semiconductors
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Potter-2012-Quantum spin liquids and the metal-insulator.pdf
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321.35 KB
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Checksum (MD5)
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Author(s)
Potter, Andrew Cole
Barkeshli, Maissam
McGreevy, John
Todadri, Senthil
Date Issued
August 2012
Journal
Physical Review Letters
Publisher
American Physical Society
Citation
Potter, Andrew et al. “Quantum Spin Liquids and the Metal-Insulator Transition in Doped Semiconductors.” Physical Review Letters 109.7 (2012). © 2012 American Physical Society
Version
Final published version
Abstract
We describe a new possible route to the metal-insulator transition in doped semiconductors such as Si:P or Si:B. We explore the possibility that the loss of metallic transport occurs through Mott localization of electrons into a quantum spin liquid state with diffusive charge neutral “spinon” excitations. Such a quantum spin liquid state can appear as an intermediate phase between the metal and the Anderson-Mott insulator. An immediate testable consequence is the presence of metallic thermal conductivity at low temperature in the electrical insulator near the metal-insulator transition. Further, we show that though the transition is second order, the zero temperature residual electrical conductivity will jump as the transition is approached from the metallic side. However, the electrical conductivity will have a nonmonotonic temperature dependence that may complicate the extrapolation to zero temperature. Signatures in other experiments and some comparisons with existing data are made.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Physics
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Article is made available in accordance with the publisher's policy and may be subject to US copyright law. Please refer to the publisher's site for terms of use.
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.109.077205
