  It has been reported that upon doping a Mott insulator, there can be a
crossover to a strongly correlated metallic phase followed by a first-order
transition to another thermodynamically stable metallic phase. We call this
first-order metal-metal transition the Sordi transition. To show theoretically
that this transition is observable, it is important to provide calculations in
situations where magnetic phase transitions do not hide the Sordi transition.
It is also important to show that it can be found on large clusters and with
different approaches. Here, we use the dynamical cluster approximation to
reveal the Sordi transition on a triangular lattice at finite temperature in
situations where there is no long-range magnetic correlations. This is relevant
for experiments on candidate spin-liquid organics. We also show that the
metallic phase closest to the insulator is a distinct pseudogap phase that
occurs because of strong interactions and short-range correlations.
