Unexpectedly thick metal-insulator domain walls around the Mott point

Mott systems often undergo a first-order metal-insulator transition, with an associated phase coexistence region exhibiting inhomogeneities and local phase separation, at finite temperatures. They typically include "bubbles," or domains of the respective phases, separated by surprisingly thick domain walls, as revealed both by imaging experiments and recent theoretical modeling. To further elucidate this unexpected behavior, we have performed a systematic model study of the structure of such metal-insulator domain walls around the Mott point. Our study, carried out using dynamical mean-field theory, reveals that a mechanism producing such thick domain walls can be traced to strong magnetic frustration. This behavior is expected to be a robust feature of "spin-liquid" Mott systems.