  The Mott critical point between a metal and a correlated insulator has
usually been studied via density or spin density bosonic mode fluctuations
according to the standard Ginzburg-Landau-Wilson phase transition paradigm. A
moment's reflection leads to increasing doubts that such an approach should
work as the transition is nonmagnetic, voiding the relevance of spin density
modes. Charge density modes are irrelevelant since the long range Coulomb
interaction leads to a large plasmon gap and their incompressibility. In
solidarity with these doubts, recent measurements of the Mott critical point in
low dimensional organic materials yield critical exponents in violent
diasagreement with the bosonic mode criticality lore. We propose that fermionic
fluctuations control the behavior of the Mott transition. The transition thus
has an intrinsic quantum aspect despite being a finite temperature phase
transition. We develop this hitherto unexplored physics, obtain experimental
predictions and find agreement with one of the novel unexplained experimental
exponents. We conclude that this Mott transition corresponds to a new
universality class of finite temperature critical points that contains quantum
effects and cannot be accounted for by conventional Ginzburg-Landau-Wilson
wisdom.
