Abstract
We show that the Mott metal-insulator transition in the standard one-band Hubbard model can be understood as a topological phase transition. Our approach is inspired by the observation that the midgap pole in the self-energy of a Mott insulator resembles the spectral pole of the localized surface state in a topological insulator. We use numerical renormalization-group–dynamical mean-field theory to solve the infinite-dimensional Hubbard model, and represent the resulting local self-energy in terms of the boundary Green's function of an auxiliary tight-binding chain without interactions. The auxiliary system is of generalized Su-Schrieffer-Heeger model type; the Mott transition corresponds to a dissociation of domain walls.
- Received 31 January 2020
- Revised 16 June 2020
- Accepted 31 July 2020
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.102.081110
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