Pressure-induced transition from a Mott insulator to a ferromagnetic Weyl metal in La2O3Fe2Se2

Abstract

The insulator-metal transition in Mott insulators, known as the Mott transition, is usually accompanied with various novel quantum phenomena, such as unconventional superconductivity, non-Fermi liquid behavior and colossal magnetoresistance. Here, based on high-pressure electrical transport and XRD measurements, and first-principles calculations, we find that a unique pressure-induced Mott transition from an antiferromagnetic Mott insulator to a ferromagnetic Weyl metal in the iron oxychalcogenide La2O3Fe2Se2 occurs around 37 GPa without structural phase transition. Our theoretical calculations reveal that such an insulator-metal transition is mainly due to the enlarged bandwidth and diminishing of electron correlation at high pressure, fitting well with the experimental data. Moreover, the high-pressure ferromagnetic Weyl metallic phase possesses attractive electronic band structures with six pairs of Weyl points close to the Fermi level, and its topological property can be easily manipulated by the magnetic field. The emergence of Weyl fermions in La2O3Fe2Se2 at high pressure may bridge the gap between nontrivial band topology and Mott insulating states. Our findings not only realize ferromagnetic Weyl fermions associated with the Mott transition, but also suggest pressure as an effective controlling parameter to tune the emergent phenomena in correlated electron systems.