Birth and death of quasiparticles in the Mott-Hubbard prototype V2O3

The infrared conductivity of V2O3 is measured in the whole phase diagram to study the behavior of quasiparticles which appear above the Neel temperature TN, and eventually disappear further enhancing the temperature. We present theoretical calculations demonstrating that this loss of coherence in the vicinity of the Mott transition is enhanced by small changes of the lattice parameters. This leads to a downturn in the optical conductivity at small frequencies, as our experimental data show above 450 K