2026/07/24 by Nikhil Vamsodharakan Seshadri, Yu Zhang
#cond-mat.str-el #quant-ph
Can vacuum electromagnetic fluctuations shift a bulk Mott transition? Within the Gutzwiller variational method, we derive a criterion that separates collective spectroscopic hybridization from thermodynamic phase control. We show that a Mott transition shifts only when the electromagnetic environment supplies finite thermodynamic spectral weight with bond-scale variation. A joint frequency--spatial Pauli--Fierz density gives the leading shift. Surface phonon polaritons yield a d-3-to-d-5 crossover, while finite-coordination variational Monte Carlo supports the predicted critical coefficient and M/N scaling.