Potential Glassy Behavior at Metal-to-Insulator Transitions in Elastic Media

Tuning of the metal-to-insulator transition in perovskite transition metal oxides is important to control physical phenomena such as magnetism, ferroelectricity, and superconductivity. The tuning by atomic size effects is mediated by long range elastic degrees of freedom that lead to anisotropic frustrated interactions, which vary according to their ability to be accommodated in the solid by octahedral rotations [1]. Treated at the mean-field level, these effects suppress the phase transitions due to thermal fluctuations. When randomness is included, we explore whether the combination of long-range coupling and frustration can lead to a glassy phase where the local distortions become frozen.

[1] G. G. Guzman-Verri, R. T. Brierley, and P. B. Littlewood, Cooperative elastic fluctuations provide tuning of the metal-insulator transition, Nature 576, 429 (2019).