Orbital Magnetic Field Driven Metal-Insulator Transition in Strongly Correlated Electron Systems

We study the effects of an orbital magnetic field on the Mott metal-insulator transition in the Hubbard-Hofstadter model. We demonstrate that sufficiently large magnetic fields induce a Mott insulator-to-metal phase transition supporting our claim with dynamical mean field theory (DMFT) numerical results. For both competing phases (metal and insulator) we observe a magnetic-field-induced metallization reflected in an enhancement of kinetic and potential energy. The kinetic energy of the Mott insulator increases due to the Aharonov-Bohm effect experienced by electrons virtually tunneling around an elementary plaquette which is, however, suppressed by strong correlations. The kinetic energy of the metallic phase, on the other hand, is more strongly affected by the magnetic field through a field-driven redistribution of spectral weight due to the formation of magnetic minibands. This leads to an increase of the kinetic energy which tends to stabilize the metallic state. Our theoretical results might be relevant for recent experimental studies on magnetic field driven insulator-to-metal transitions in strongly correlated materials such as VO_{2}, λ-type organic conductors, and moiré multilayers.