234 Ch.

5 Mott Insulatom

the Heisenberg Hamiltonian would be difficult to explain by any other

mechanism. It seems likely that this scenario is part of the story of the
V203 system which we discuss in the next Section.

Problem 5.6. Determine all the low-lying levels of the ‘leg molecule” spec-
ified in (5.72)-(5.74), for N = 2 electrons. Second-order perturbation theory
is sufficient. Use the pseudospin variable T to express the low-energy effective
Hamiltonian for the symmetrical model t a = tb = t , U, = ub = U,Uab = U- J.
Problem 5.7 The following kind of situation may be realized in V203: there
is orbital ordering at T = 0, but at a relatively low temperature, the system
undergoes a first-order transition into a state without orbital order. How does
the spin-spin coupling change at the transition? For the sake of simplicity, you
may assume that the system is described by the effective Hamiltonian (5.120)
derived in the previous problem.
Problem 5.8. The derivation of an S = 1 exchange Hamiltonian. Consider
the e, molecule with N = 4 electrons in the strongly interacting limit when
U, = Ua = U , Uab, and even J are considerably larger than t a = t b = t . The
low-energy subspace is spanned by the on-site triplets. Express the effective
Hamiltonian in terms of the S = 1 spin operators!
Compare the results of second-order and fourth-order perturbation theory.
Does the form of the Hamiltonian change in an essential manner if you include
the fourth-order corrections? Discuss the result, assuming that U - N J.

5.5 Correlated Insulators

The realization that the insulating nature of certain transition metal
oxides is an electron correlation effect was the starting point of the study
of “Mott phenomena’’ [24)a long time ago, and correlated insulators
have remained a major field of investigation ever since. In the meantime,
we have discovered that there are several different classes of correlated
insulators. In Ch. 4, we started to discuss the most important class:
systems which would be metallic if it were not for the opening of a
Mott-Hubbard gap between the Hubbard subbands. In this seme, all
these (usually transition-metal-based) systems are Mott insulators but
shortly, we will introduce a further criterion to classify them as Mott
insulators in a narrower sense, and charge transfer insulators. In any
case, their low-energy effective Hamiltonian is some kind of Heisenberg
model, with predominantly antiferromagnetic couplings, so the typical