Orbital-selective crossover and Mott transitions in an asymmetric Hubbard model of cold atoms in optical lattices

Abstract

We study the asymmetric Hubbard model at half filling as a generic model to describe the physics of two species of repulsively interacting fermionic cold atoms in optical lattices. We use dynamical mean-field theory to obtain the paramagnetic phase diagram of the model as a function of temperature, interaction strength, and hopping asymmetry. A Mott transition with a region of two coexistent solutions is found for all nonzero values of the hopping asymmetry. At low temperatures the metallic phase is a heavy Fermi liquid, qualitatively analogous to the Fermi-liquid state of the symmetric Hubbard model. Above a coherence temperature, an orbital-selective crossover takes place, wherein one fermionic species effectively localizes, and the resulting bad metallic state resembles the non-Fermi-liquid state of the Falicov-Kimball model. We compute observables relevant to cold atom systems such as the double occupation, the specific heat, and entropy, and characterize their behavior in the different phases. © 2011 American Physical Society.