SOLVABLE MODEL OF A METAL-INSULATOR TRANSITION

Abstract

A solvable model of d = 1 spinless fermions at half-filling which exhibits a Mott transition is studied in detail. Many response functions are computed: at zero and nonzero temperatures, in the insulating and metallic sites, at the transition, and at q ≃ 0, 2k F . Some quantities are computed exactly, others only upto a scale factor. Some results are old, but mentioned here for completeness. Some are rederived using new tools such as conformal invariance. The rest are new. Next, the effect of randomness on the Mott state is explored. It is found, on the basis of Imry-Ma type arguments that no matter how large the gap is, the Mott insulator turns into an Anderson insulator immediately.