Orbital Selective Mott Transition Induced by Orbitals with Distinct Noninteracting Densities of States

Abstract

By applying dynamical mean-field theory in combination with exact diagonalization at zero temperature to a half-filled Hubbard model with two orbitals having distinct noninteracting densities of states, we show that an orbital selective Mott transition (OSMT) will take place even without crystal field splitting, differences in bandwidth and orbital degeneracy. We find that formation of local spin triplet states followed by a two-stage breakdown of the Kondo effect, rather than decoupling of charge degrees of freedom among different orbitals, is the underlying physics for the OSMT. The relevance of our findings to Ca$_{2-x}$Sr$_x$RuO$_4$ and the iron-based superconductors is discussed, and a decent candidate to detect such an origin for the OSMT is proposed.