Multiband effects on the conductivity for a multiband Hubbard model

The newly discovered iron-based superconductors have attracted lots of interests, and the corresponding theoretical studies suggest that the system should have six bands. In this paper, we study the multiband effects on the conductivity based on the exact solutions of one-dimensional two-band Hubbard model. We find that the orbital degree of freedom might enhance the critical value $U_c$ of on-site interaction of the transition from a metal to an insulator. This observation is helpful to understand why undoped High-$T_c$ superconductors are usually insulators, while recently discovered iron-based superconductors are metal. Our results imply that the orbital degree of freedom in the latter cases might play an essential role.