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Si, Qimiao

Publications and source records attributed to Si, Qimiao.

28 records · Page 2
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2021

Orbital Selectivity in Electron Correlations and Superconducting Pairing of Iron-Based Superconductors

Electron correlations play a central role in iron-based superconductors. In these systems, multiple Fe 3 d -orbitals are active in the low-energy physics, and they are not all degenerate. For these reasons, the role of orbital-selective correlations has been an active topic in the study of the iron-based systems. In this article, we survey the recent developments on the subject. For the normal state, we emphasize the orbital-selective Mott physics that has been extensively studied, especially in the iron chalcogenides, in the case of electron filling n ∼ 6 . In addition, the interplay between orbital selectivity and electronic nematicity is addressed. For the superconducting state, we summarize the initial ideas for orbital-selective pairing and discuss the recent explosive activities along this direction. We close with some perspectives on several emerging topics. These include the evolution of the orbital-selective correlations, magnetic and nematic orders, and superconductivity as the electron filling factor is reduced from 6 to 5, as well as the interplay between electron correlations and topological band structure in iron-based superconductors.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗
DOE OSTI2020

Incommensurate Spin Fluctuations in the Spin-Triplet Superconductor Candidate UTe 2

Spin-triplet superconductors are of extensive current interest because they can host topological state and Majorana fermions important for quantum computation. The uranium-based heavy-fermion superconductor UTe 2 has been argued as a spin-triplet superconductor similar to UGe2, URhGe, and UCoGe, where the superconducting phase is near (or coexists with) a ferromagnetic (FM) instability and spin-triplet electron pairing is driven by FM spin fluctuations. Here we use neutron scattering to show that, although UTe 2 exhibits no static magnetic order down to 0.3 K, its magnetism in the [0,K,L] plane is dominated by incommensurate spin fluctuations near an antiferromagnetic ordering wave vector and extends to at least 2.6 meV. We are able to understand the dominant incommensurate spin fluctuations of UTe 2 in terms of its electronic structure calculated using a combined density-functional and dynamic mean-field theory.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗
DOE OSTI2020

Theoretical investigation of superconductivity in trilayer square-planar nickelates

The discovery of superconductivity in Sr-doped NdNiO 2 is a crucial breakthrough in the long pursuit for nickel oxide materials with electronic and magnetic properties similar to those of the cuprates. NdNiO 2 is the infinite-layer member of a family of square-planar nickelates with general chemical formula R n +1 Ni n O 2 n +2 (R = La, Pr, Nd, n = 2, 3,...∞). In this Rapid Communication, we investigate superconductivity in the trilayer member of this series (R4Ni 3 O 8 ) using a combination of first-principles and $\textit{t–J}$ model calculations. R 4 Ni 3 O 8 compounds resemble cuprates more than RNiO 2 materials in that only Ni-d n 2 – y 2 bands cross the Fermi level, they exhibit a largely reduced charge transfer energy, and as a consequence superexchange interactions are significantly enhanced. In this work, we find that the superconducting instability in doped R 4 Ni 3 O 8 compounds is considerably stronger with a maximum gap about four times larger than that in Sr 0.2 Nd 0.8 NiO 2 .

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗
DOE OSTI2020

Fractionalized Excitations Revealed by Entanglement Entropy

Fractionalized excitations develop in many unusual many-body states such as quantum spin liquids, disordered phases that cannot be described using any local order parameter. Also, because these exotic excitations correspond to emergent degrees of freedom, how to probe them and establish their existence is a long-standing challenge. We present a general procedure to reveal the fractionalized excitations using real-space entanglement entropy in critical spin liquids that are particularly relevant to experiments. Furthermore, we show how to use the entanglement entropy to construct the corresponding spinon Fermi surface. Our work defines a new pathway to establish and characterize exotic excitations in novel quantum phases of matter.

2-dimensional systems↗
DOE OSTI2020

Hall-coefficient diagnostics of the surface state in pressurized SmB 6

In this study, we report results of the high-pressure Hall coefficient (R H ) measurements in the putative topological Kondo insulator SmB 6 up to 37 GPa. Below 10 GPa, our data reveal that R H (T) exhibits a prominent peak upon cooling below 20 K. Remarkably, the temperature at which surface conduction dominates coincides with the temperature of the peak in R H (T). The temperature dependent resistance and Hall coefficient can be well fitted by a two-channel model with contributions from the metallic surface and the thermally activated bulk states. When the bulk of SmB 6 becomes metallic and magnetic at ~10 GPa, both the R H (T) peak and the resistance plateau disappear simultaneously. Here, our results indicate that the R H (T) peak is a fingerprint to diagnose the presence of a metallic surface state in SmB 6 . The high-pressure magnetic state of SmB 6 is robust to 180 GPa, and no evidence of superconductivity is observed in the metallic phase.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗
DOE OSTI2020

Anisotropic magnetic excitations of a frustrated bilinear-biquadratic spin model: Implications for spin waves of detwinned iron pnictides

Elucidating the nature of spin excitations is important to understanding the mechanism of superconductivity in the iron pnictides. Motivated by recent inelastic neutron scattering measurements in the nearly 100% detwinned BaFe 2 As 2 , we study the spin dynamics of an $\textit{S}$ = 1 frustrated bilinear-biquadratic Heisenberg model in the antiferromagnetic phase with wave vector (π, 0). The biquadratic interactions are treated in a dynamical way using a flavor-wave theory in an $\textit{SU}$(3) representation. Besides the dipolar spin wave (magnon) excitations, the biquadratic interactions give rise to quadrupolar excitations at high energies. In this work, we find that the quadrupolar wave significantly influences, in an energy dependent way, the anisotropy between the spin excitation spectra along the (π, 0) and (0, π) directions in the wave vector space. Our theoretical results capture the essential behavior of the spin dynamics measured in the antiferromagnetic phase of the detwinned BaFe 2 As 2 . More generally, our results underscore the importance of electron correlation effects for the microscopic physics of the iron pnictides.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗