Decohering the Fermi liquid: A dual approach to the Mott Transition

Understand

We present a theoretical approach to describing the Mott transition of electrons on a two dimensional lattice that begins with the low energy effective theory of the Fermi liquid.

• The approach to the Mott transition must be characterized by the suppression of density and current fluctuations which correspond to specific shape deformations of the Fermi surface.
• We explore the nature of the Mott insulator and the corresponding Mott transition when these shape fluctuations of the Fermi surface are suppressed without making any a prior assumptions about other Fermi surface shape fluctuations.
• Building on insights from the theory of the Mott transition of bosons, we implement this suppression by identifying and condensing vortex degrees of freedom in the phase of the low energy electron operator.