The Mott Metal-Insulator transition in the half-filled Hubbard model on the Triangular Lattice

Abstract

We investigate the metal-insulator transition in the half-filled Hubbard model on a two-dimensional triangular lattice using both the Kotliar-Ruckenstein slave-boson technique, and exact numerical diagonalization of finite clusters. Contrary to the case of the square lattice, where the perfect nesting of the Fermi surface leads to a metal-insulator transition at arbitrarily small values of U, always accompanied by antiferromagnetic ordering, on the triangular lattice, due to the lack of perfect nesting, the transition takes place at a finite value of U, and frustration induces a non-trivial competition among different magnetic phases. Indeed, within the mean-field approximation in the slave-boson approach, as the interaction grows the paramagnetic metal turns into a metallic phase with incommensurate spiral ordering. Increasing further the interaction, a linear spin-density-wave is stabilized, and finally for strong coupling the latter phase undergoes a first-order transition towards an antiferromagnetic insulator. No trace of the intermediate phases is instead seen in the exact diagonalization results, indicating a transition between a paramagnetic metal and an antiferromagnetic insulator.