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At least 451 records · Page 25

Kondo Physics and Unconventional Superconductivity in the U Intermetallic U 2 PtC 2 Revealed by NMR

The set of slides begins by discussing the topic NMR of heavy fermion superconductors under the topics heavy fermion materials, superconductivity, and nuclear magnetic resonance. The history of these phenomena is sketched, with particular mention made of CeCu 2 Si 2 , UPt 3 , and UBe 13 . Unconventional superconductivity, which is non-phonon mediated superconductivity, presents a high T c (up to ~150 K), and involves a more complicated spin/orbital wave function. The presentation then goes on to give experimental NMR results for U 2 PtC 2 and Pu-115’s.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗

Collision of two spin-polarized fermionic clouds

We study the collision of two spin-polarized Fermi clouds in a harmonic trap using a simulation of the Boltzmann equation. As observed in recent experiments, we find three distinct regimes of behavior. For weak interactions the clouds pass through each other. If interactions are increased they approach each other exponentially and for strong interactions they bounce off each other several times. We thereby demonstrate that all these phenomena can be reproduced using a semiclassical collisional approach and that these changes in behavior are associated with an increasing collision rate. We then show that the oscillation of the clouds in the bounce regime is an example of an unusual case in quantum gases: a nonlinear coupling between collective modes, namely, the spin dipole mode and the axial breathing mode, which is enforced by collisions. We also determine the frequency of the bounce as a function of the final temperature of the equilibrated system.

74 ATOMIC AND MOLECULAR PHYSICS↗

Exact ground states of a staggered supersymmetric model for lattice fermions

We study a supersymmetric model for strongly interacting lattice fermions in the presence of a staggering parameter. The staggering is introduced as a tunable parameter in the manifestly supersymmetric Hamiltonian. We obtain analytic expressions for the ground states in the limit of small and large staggering for the model on the class of doubly decorated lattices. On this type of lattice there are two ground states, each with a different density. In one limit we find these ground states to be a simple Wigner crystal and a valence bond solid state. In the other limit we find two types of quantum liquids. As a special case, we investigate the quantum liquid state on the one dimensional chain in detail. It is characterized by a massless kink that separates two types of order.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗

Pressure-tuned quantum criticality in the antiferromagnetic Kondo semimetal CeNi 2–δ As 2

The easily tuned balance among competing interactions in Kondo-lattice metals allows access to a zero-temperature, continuous transition between magnetically ordered and disordered phases, a quantum-critical point (QCP). Indeed, these highly correlated electron materials are prototypes for discovering and exploring quantum-critical states. Theoretical models proposed to account for the strange thermodynamic and electrical transport properties that emerge around the QCP of a Kondo lattice assume the presence of an indefinitely large number of itinerant charge carriers. Here, we report a systematic transport and thermodynamic investigation of the Kondo-lattice system CeNi 2–δ As 2 (δ ≈ 0.28) as its antiferromagnetic order is tuned by pressure and magnetic field to zero-temperature boundaries. These experiments show that the very small but finite carrier density of ~0.032 e – /formular unit in CeNi 2–δ As 2 leads to unexpected transport signatures of quantum criticality and the delayed development of a fully coherent Kondo-lattice state with decreasing temperature. Here, the small carrier density and associated semimetallicity of this Kondo-lattice material favor an unconventional, local-moment type of quantum criticality and raises the specter of the Nozières exhaustion idea that an insufficient number of conduction-electron spins to separately screen local moments requires collective Kondo screening.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

Stabilization of a Majorana zero mode through quantum frustration

We analyze a system in which a topological Majorana zero mode (tMZM) combines with a Majorana produced by quantum frustration (fMZM) to produce a novel ground state. The system that we study combines two parts, a grounded topological superconducting wire that hosts two tMZMs at its ends and an on-resonant quantum dot connected to two dissipative leads. The quantum dot with dissipative leads creates an effective two-channel Kondo (2CK) state in which quantum frustration yields an isolated fMZM at the dot. We find that coupling the dot to one end of the topological wire stabilizes the tMZM at the other end. Three routes are used to obtain these results: (i) calculation of the conductance through an auxiliary detector quantum dot, (ii) renormalization group (RG) arguments and the g theorem, and (iii) a fully nonequilibrium calculation of the I(V) curve and shot noise S(V) through the detector dot. In addition to providing a route to achieving an unpaired Majorana zero mode, this scheme provides a clear signature of the presence of the 2CK frustration-induced Majorana.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗

Morphing of two-dimensional hole systems at ν = 3 / 2 in parallel magnetic fields: Compressible, stripe, and fractional quantum Hall phases

A transport study of two-dimensional (2D) holes confined to wide GaAs quantum wells provides a glimpse of a subtle competition between different many-body phases at a Landau level filling ν = 3/2 in tilted magnetic fields. At large tilt angles (θ), an anisotropic, stripe (or nematic) phase replaces the isotropic compressible Fermi sea at ν = 3/2 if the quantum well has a symmetric charge distribution. Furthermore, when the charge distribution is made asymmetric, instead of the stripe phase, an even-denominator fractional quantum state appears at ν = 3/2 in a range of large θ, and reverts back to a compressible state at even higher θ. We attribute this remarkable evolution to the significant mixing of the excited and ground-state Landau levels of 2D hole systems in tilted fields.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗

Andreev Reflection and Klein Tunneling in High-Temperature Superconductor-Graphene Junctions

Scattering processes in quantum materials emerge as resonances in electronic transport, including confined modes, Andreev states, and Yu-Shiba-Rusinov states. However, in most instances, these resonances are driven by a single scattering mechanism. Here, in this paper, we show the appearance of resonances due to the combination of two simultaneous scattering mechanisms, one from superconductivity and the other from graphene p-n junctions. These resonances stem from Andreev reflection and Klein tunneling that occur at two different interfaces of a hole-doped region of graphene formed at the boundary with superconducting graphene due to proximity effects from Bi 2 Sr 2 Ca 1 Cu 2 O 8+δ . The resonances persist with gating from p + -p and p-n configurations. The suppression of the oscillation amplitude above the bias energy which is comparable to the induced superconducting gap indicates the contribution from Andreev reflection. Our experimental measurements are supported by quantum transport calculations in such interfaces, leading to analogous resonances. Our results put forward a hybrid scattering mechanism in graphene–high-temperature superconductor heterojunctions of potential impact for graphene-based Josephson junctions.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗

Shuttling Majorana zero modes in disordered and noisy topological superconductors

The braiding of Majorana zero modes (MZMs) forms the fundamental building block for topological quantum computation. Braiding protocols which involve the physical exchange of MZMs are typically envisioned on a network of topological superconducting wires. An important component of these protocols is the transport of MZMs, which can be performed by using electric gates to locally tune sections of the wire between topologically trivial and nontrivial phases. In this work, we numerically simulate this transport by tuning a single section of a superconducting wire which contains either disorder (uncorrelated and correlated) or noise. We focus on the impact of these additional effects on the diabatic error, which describes unwanted transitions between the ground state and excited states. We show that the behavior of the average diabatic error is predominantly controlled by the statistics of the minimum bulk energy gap which is suppressed in the presence of disorder. The increase in diabatic error can be several orders of magnitude and is most deleterious when the disorder correlation length is a finite fraction of the transport distance and negligible when these lengths are far apart. In the presence of noise, the diabatic error is significantly enhanced due to optical transitions which depend on the minimum bulk energy gap as well as the frequency modes present in the noise. The results presented here serve to further characterize the diabatic error in disordered and noisy settings, which are important considerations in practical implementations of physical braiding schemes.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗

Dehybridization of f and d states in the heavy-fermion system YbRh 2 Si 2

Here, we report an optically induced reduction of the f-d hybridization in the prototypical heavy-fermion compound YbRh 2 Si 2 . We use femtosecond time- and angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy to monitor changes of spectral weight and binding energies of the Yb 4f and Rh 4d states before the lattice temperature increases after pumping. Overall, the f-d hybridization decreases smoothly with increasing electronic temperature up to ~ 250 K but changes slope at ~ 100 K. This temperature scale coincides with the onset of coherent Kondo scattering and with thermally populating the first excited crystal electrical field level. Extending previous photoemission studies, we observe a persistent f-d hybridization up to at least ~ 250 K, which is far larger than the coherence temperature defined by transport but in agreement with the temperature dependence of the noninteger Yb valence. Our data underlines the distinction of probes accessing spin and charge degrees of freedom in strongly correlated systems.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

Pseudo Landau levels and quantum oscillations in strained Weyl semimetals

The crystal lattice deformation in Weyl materials where the two chiralities are separated in momentum space leads to the appearance of gauge pseudo-fields. We investigated the pseudo-magnetic field induced quantum oscillations in strained Weyl semimetal (WSM). In contrast to all previous works on this problem, we use here a more general tilted Hamiltonian. Such Hamiltonian, seems to be is more suitable for a strained WSMs. We have shown that a pseudo-magnetic field induced magnetization of strained WSM is nonzero due to the fact that electric field (gradient of the deformation potential) is induced simultaneously with the pseudo-magnetic field. This related with fact that the pseudo Landau levels (LLs) in strained WSM are differ in vicinities of different WPs due to the presence of tilt in spectrum. Such violation of the equivalence between Weyl points (WPs) leads to modulation of quantum oscillations. We also showed that magnetization magnitude can be changed by application of an external electric field. In particular, it can be reduced to zero. The possibility of controlling of the magnetization by an electric field is interesting both from a fundamental point of view (a new type of magneto-electric effect) and application point of view (additional possibility to control diamagnetism of deformed WSMs). Finally, a coexistence of type-I and type-II Weyl fermions is possible in the system under investigation. Such phase is absolutely new for physics of topological systems.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗

Specific heat and pairing of Dirac composite fermions in the half-filled Landau level

A recent proposal argues that an alternate description of the half-filled Landau level is a theory of massless Dirac fermions. We examine the possibility of pairing of these Dirac fermions by numerically solving the coupled Eliashberg equations unlike our previous calculation (Wang and Chakravarty, 2016). In addition, vertex corrections are calculated to be zero from the Ward identity. We find that pairing is possible in non-zero angular momentum channels; only differences are minor numerical shifts. As before, the pairing leads to the gapped Pfaffian and anti-Pfaffian states. However, in our approximation scheme, pairing is not possible in the putative particle–hole symmetric state for ℓ=0 angular momentum. The specific heat at low temperatures of a system of massless Dirac fermions interacting with a transverse gauge field, expected to be relevant for the half-filled Landau level, is calculated. Using the Luttinger formula, it is found to be ∝TlnT in the leading low temperature limit, due to the exchange of transverse gauge bosons. The result agrees with the corresponding one in the nonrelativistic composite fermion theory of Halperin, Lee and Read of the half-filled Landau level.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗

Symmetry-projected wave functions in quantum Monte Carlo calculations

Here, we consider symmetry-projected Hartree-Fock trial wave functions in constrained-path Monte Carlo (CPMC) calculations. Previous CPMC calculations have mostly employed Hartree-Fock (HF) trial wave functions, restricted or unrestricted. The symmetry-projected HF approach results in a hierarchy of wave functions with increasing quality: the more symmetries that are broken and restored in a self-consistent manner, the higher the quality of the trial wave function. This hierarchy is approximately maintained in CPMC calculations: the accuracy in the energy increases and the statistical variance decreases when further symmetries are broken and restored. Significant improvement is achieved in CPMC with the best symmetry-projected trial wave functions over those from simple HF. We analyze and quantify the behavior using the two-dimensional repulsive Hubbard model as an example. In the sign-problem-free region, where CPMC can be made exact but a constraint is deliberately imposed here, spin-projected wave functions remove the constraint bias. Away from half filling, spatial symmetry restoration in addition to that of the spin leads to highly accurate results from CPMC. Since the computational cost of symmetry-projected HF trial wave functions in CPMC can be made to scale algebraically with system size, this provides a potentially general approach for accurate calculations in many-fermion systems.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗

Extended nuclear quadrupole resonance study of the heavy-fermion superconductor PuCoGa 5

PuCoGa 5 has emerged as a prototypical heavy-fermion superconductor, with its transition temperature (T c ≃ 18.5 K) being the highest amongst such materials. Nonetheless, a clear description as to what drives the superconducting pairing is still lacking, rendered complicated by the notoriously intricate nature of plutonium's 5f valence electrons. Here, we present a detailed 69,71 Ga nuclear quadrupole resonance (NQR) study of PuCoGa 5 , concentrating on the system's normal state properties near to T c and aiming to detect distinct signatures of possible pairing mechanisms. In particular, the quadrupole frequency and spin-lattice relaxation rate were measured for the two crystallographically inequivalent Ga sites and for both Ga isotopes, in the temperature range 1.6–300 K. No evidence of significant charge fluctuations is found from the NQR observables. On the contrary, the low-energy dynamics is dominated by anisotropic spin fluctuations with strong, nearly critical, in-plane character, which are effectively identical to the case of the sister compound PuCoIn 5 . Lastly, these findings are discussed within the context of different theoretical proposals for the unconventional pairing mechanism in heavy-fermion superconductors.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗

Structure and physical properties of SrNiR u 5 O 11 single crystals: An $R$-type ferrite based on ordered kagome nets

Single crystals of the R-type ferrite SrNiR u 5 O 11 were grown from a chloride flux. The hexagonal crystal structure contains ruthenium located on distorted kagome nets. The low-temperature dc magnetic susceptibilities (χ ⊥ and χ ∥ , perpendicular and parallel to the c axis, respectively) diverge as T -0.3 , and do not exhibit any indication of long-range magnetic order down to 4.5 K. The electrical resistivity varies as T 1.6 below 40 K, which is typical of non-Fermi liquids, and may originate from a competition between residual magnetic interactions among Ni 2+ (S = 1) spins and geometrical frustration on the two-dimensional kagome lattice of Ru 3+ (S = ½ ) spins. The transverse magnetoresistivity ρ xy at constant temperature T = 5K for current (J)-magnetic field (H) configurations, J⊥H ∥ c axis and J ∥ H⊥c axis, reveals no anomalous contribution, which is consistent with the absence of magnetic order. Finally, fits of the specific heat data below 10 K require a dominant, but unusual electronic term of the form C el = γT 1.2 , which is expected for massless Dirac fermion states in topological insulators, or spin-liquid phases.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗