Antiferromagnetic Excitonic Insulator

Abstract

The effective the two-band Hamiltonian is obtained for iridium oxides with account for strong electron correlations (SEC) and the spin–orbit interaction. The intraatomic electron correlations in iridium ions induce the formation of Hubbard fermions (HF) filling the states in the valence band. Another consequence of SEC is associated with the emergence of the antiferromagnetic (AFM) exchange interaction between HF in accordance with the Anderson mechanism. As a result, a long-range antiferromagnetic order is established in the system, and in the conditions of band overlapping, the intersite Coulomb interaction induces a phase transition to the excitonic insulator (EI) state with a long-range AFM order. The system of integral self-consistent equations, the solution to which determines the excitonic order parameter components Δ_i, j(k), sublattice magnetization M, Hubbard fermion concentration n_d, and chemical potential μ, is obtained using the atomic representation, the method of two-time temperature Green’s functions, and the Zwanzig–Mori projection technique. The symmetry classification of AFM EI phases is performed, and it is shown that in the nearest neighbor approximation, state Δ_{i, j}(k) with the s-type symmetry corresponds to the ground state, while the phases with the d- and p-symmetries are metastable.