Electronic orbital currents and polarization in Mott insulators

Abstract

Strongly correlated electron insulators are one of the most important classes of materials in modern solid-state physics. We demonstrate that certain classes of Mott insulators, that usually are geometrically frustrated, exhibit unexpected charge effects: for certain spin textures, spontaneous circular electric currents or nonuniform charge distribution exist in the ground state of Mott insulators. In addition, low-energy ``magnetic'' states contribute comparably to the dielectric and magnetic response functions, ${ϵ}_{ik}(\ensuremath{\omega})$ and ${\ensuremath{\mu}}_{ik}(\ensuremath{\omega})$, leading to interesting phenomena such as dipole-active ESR transitions, rotation of the electric-field polarization, and resonances which may be common to both functions producing a negative refraction index in a window of frequencies.