摘要
The electronic evolution of Mott insulators into exotic correlated phases remains puzzling,because of electron interaction and inhomogeneity.Introduction of individual imperfections in Mott insulators could help capture the main mechanism and serve as a basis to understand the evolution.Here we utilize scanning tunneling microscopy to probe the atomic scale electronic structure of the spin-orbit-coupling assisted Mott insulator Sr_(3)Ir_(2)O_(7).It is found that the tunneling spectra exhibit a homogeneous Mott gap in defect-free regions,but near the oxygen vacancy in the rotated Ir O_(2)plane the local Mott gap size is significantly enhanced.We attribute the enhanced gap to the locally reduced hopping integral between the 5d electrons of neighboring Ir sites via the bridging planar oxygen p orbitals.Such bridging defects have a dramatic influence on local bandwidth,thus provide a new way to manipulate the strength of Mottness in a Mott insulator.
作者
徐妙
邹昌炜
龚本超
贾可
叶树森
郝镇齐
刘凯
石友国
卢仲毅
蔡鹏
王亚愚
Miao Xu;Changwei Zou;Benchao Gong;Ke Jia;Shusen Ye;Zhenqi Hao;Kai Liu;Youguo Shi;Zhong-Yi Lu;Peng Cai;Yayu Wang(State Key Laboratory of Low Dimensional Quantum Physics,Department of Physics,Tsinghua University,Beijing 100084,China;Department of Physics and Beijing Key Laboratory of Opto-electronic Functional Materials and Micro-nano Devices,Renmin University of China,Beijing 100872,China;Beijing National Laboratory for Condensed Matter Physics,Institute of Physics,Chinese Academy of Sciences,Beijing 100190,China;Songshan Lake Materials Laboratory,Dongguan 523808,China;Frontier Science Center for Quantum Information,Beijing 100084,China)
基金
the National Key R&D Program of China(Grant No.2017YFA0302900)
the Basic Science Center Project of National Natural Science Foundation of China(Grant No.51788104)
supported in part by the Beijing Advanced Innovation Center for Future Chip(ICFC)
Open Research Fund Program of the State Key Laboratory of Low-Dimensional Quantum Physics
supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China(Grant No.12074424)
the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities
the Research Funds of Renmin University of China。
