Dimer Mott insulator in an oxide heterostructure

Abstract

We study the problem of designing an artificial Mott insulator in a correlated oxide heterostructure. We consider the extreme limit of quantum confinement based on ionic discontinuity doping, and argue that a unique dimer Mott insulator can be achieved for the case of a single SrO layer in a GdTiO${}_{3}$ matrix. In the dimer Mott insulator, electrons are localized not to individual atoms but to bonding orbitals on molecular dimers formed across a bilayer of two TiO${}_{2}$ planes and are analogous to the Mott insulating state of Hubbard ladders, studied in the 1990s. We verify the existence of the dimer Mott insulator through both ab initio and model Hamiltonian studies, and find for reasonable values of Hubbard $U$ that it is stable and ferromagnetic with a clear bonding/antibonding splitting of order 0.65 eV and a significant smaller Mott gap whose size depends upon $U$. The combined effects of polar discontinuity, strong structural relaxation, and electron correlations all contribute to the realization of this unique ground state.