A study of extended-to-Localized transition of electronic states of fluid mercury around the metal-to-insulator transition region using the framework of multifractal analysis

Abstract The metal-to-insulator transition and the presence of the disorder induced localization of electronic orbitals of fluid mercury (f-Hg) were investigated. The electronic structure of f-Hg was simulated by using the ab initio molecular dynamics. To determine the simulation size dependency of the electronic orbital, the electronic orbitals of systems with different number of atoms were investigated. The multifractal measure was used for analyzing the localization of the electronic orbitals and the size dependency of that reversed during the decrease of the density, which suggests there exists the extended-to-localized transition near the metal-to-insulator transition region of f-Hg.