Domain wall conductivity with strong Coulomb interaction of two-dimensional massive Dirac electrons in the organic conductor alpha-(BEDT-TTF)(2)I-3

摘要

Motivated by the results of recent transport and optical conductivity studies, we propose a semi-infinite two-dimensional lattice model for interacting massive Dirac electrons in the pressurized organic conductor alpha-(BEDT-TTF)(2)I-3, and address the problem of domain wall conductivity in a charge-ordered insulating phase under realistic experimental conditions. Using the extended Hubbard model at a mean field level, we present results of extensive numerical studies around the critical region of the model, reporting on the resistivity and optical conductivity calculated by means of the Nakano-Kubo formula. We find that the activation gap extracted from the resistivity data can be much smaller than the optical gap in the critical region, which is induced by metallic conduction along a one-dimensional domain wall emerging at the border of two charge-ordered ferroelectric regions with opposite polarizations. The data are consistent with the observed transport gap in real alpha-(BEDT-TTF)(2)I-3 samples that is reduced remarkably faster than the optical gap upon suppressing charge order with pressure. Our optical conductivity also reveals an additional shoulderlike structure at low energy inside the gap, which is argued to be directly relevant to the metallic bound states residing on the domain wall.