Ever since Mott's time, understanding of the enhanced Pauli susceptibility observed in many metallic compounds has remained a great challenge[1]. This, in particular, holds in regard to the temperature dependence of the magnetic susceptibility of LaNiO₃, which, up until recently, was thought to be greatly enhanced yet almost temperature independent. However, recent advances in growth of highly stoichiometric LaNiO₃ single crystals have revealed that the magnetic susceptibility of LaNiO₃ has in fact a much more complex temperature dependence[2,3], which has invoked a renewed theoretical interest in the basic electronic structure of this material. In this talk, we propose an explanation of the recent data assuming temperature dependent disproportionation of localized magnetic moments.

1. N.F. Mott, Metal-insulator transitions 2nd ed., Taylor & Francis, 1990, ISBN:0850667836, p.102-103, 132-143
2. J. Zhang et.al., Cryst. Growth Des. 2017, 17, 2730-2735
3. H. Guo et.al., Nature communications, (2018) 9:43