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Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

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At least 667 records · Page 37
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2022

Geometry, Disorder and Phase Transitions in Topological States of Matter

The quantum Hall effect is the birthplace of topological states of matter, a major theme at the forefront of condensed matter physics in the past two decades. The fractional quantum Hall (FQH) effect revolutionized our understanding of phases of electronic matter. FQH states support exotic fractionally charged excitations that obey Abelian or non-Abelian fractional statistics, which are topological excitations that result from the underlying topological order. During this project, our group discovered a previously unrecognized geometric degree of freedom of incompressible FQH states and studied that for a variety of gapped FQH states. We brought this new concept into direct contact with experiments for the first time by generalizing it to Fermi-liquid states of composite fermions. Using the newly formulated powerful infinite Density Matrix Renormalization Group method, our numerical calculations yielded a parameter free prediction that was found to be in excellent agreement with experimental findings on electron systems in semiconductor heterostructures. In parallel, we performed extensive numerical studies on different, competing phases at various Landau level filling factors, and quantum phase transitions that result from such a competition, e.g. Abelian-non-Abelian phase transitions in bilayer systems. We studied geometrical excitations dubbed “gravitons” (because of their analogy with excitations in the theory of gravitation) and ways to excite and detect them, and explored how they couple with topological excitations. In graphene-based chiral materials, we realized the ability to tune through different incompressible and compressible states in a single Landau level, and found appropriate experimental parameters for the exploration of universal Luttinger liquid behavior not obtained in semiconductor-based electron systems. We showed that topological systems had a very different response from nontopological systems to strong disorder (many-body localization) as well as periodic drives.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗
DOE OSTI2011

Electron Screening in Metals

Electron screening enhances cross sections for nuclear reactions at low energies. We have studied the {sup 1}H({sup 7}Li,{alpha}){sup 4}He reaction in inverse kinematics and observed large electron screening only when the metallic targets were under tensile stress. Hydrogen was loaded into Pd and PdAg alloy foils from gas phase and concentrations reached about 0.6 protons per metallic atom. Mechanical pressure creates stress induced states in the metal. Without pressure hydrogen occupies octahedral interstitial positions in the fcc Pd lattice. Under stress some protons move to dislocated octahedral (dis-O) sites in the lattice. We believe that the magnitude of screening in various metals depends on the electron density on dis-O sites in case of fcc lattices or dislocated tetrahedral sites in bcc metals. We are currently trying to confirm the above by determining the electron density at the sites occupied by protons via the measurement of proton Knight's shift with {sup 1}H nuclear magnetic resonance technique.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2023

Ground and excited states of even-numbered Hubbard ring at half-filling: comparison of the extended Gutzwiller approach with exact diagonalization

It remains a great challenge in condensed matter physics to develop a method to treat strongly correlated many-body systems with balanced accuracy and efficiency. We introduce an extended Gutzwiller (EG) method incorporating a manifold technique, which builds an effective manifold of the many-body Hilbert space, to describe the ground- and excited-state properties of strongly correlated electrons. Here we systematically apply an EG projector onto the ground and excited states of a non-interacting system. Diagonalization of the true Hamiltonian within the manifold formed by the resulting EG wavefunctions gives the approximate ground and excited states of the correlated system. To validate this technique, we implement it on even-numbered fermionic Hubbard rings at half-filling with periodic boundary conditions, and compare the results with the exact diagonalization (ED) method. The EG method is capable of generating high-quality ground and low-lying excited state wavefunctions, as evidenced by the high overlaps of wavefunctions between the EG and ED methods. Favorable comparisons are also achieved for other quantities including the total energy, the double occupancy, the total spin and the staggered magnetization. With the capability of accessing the excited states, the EG method can capture the essential features of the one-electron removal spectral function that contains contributions from states deep in the excited spectrum. Finally, we provide an outlook on the application of this method on large extended systems.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗
DOE OSTI2015

Effects of interactions on the generalized Hong–Ou–Mandel effect

We numerically investigate the influence of interactions on the generalized Hong–Ou–Mandel (HOM) effect for bosonic particles in a (quasi-)one-dimensional set-up with weak harmonic confinement and show results for the cases of N = 2, N = 3 and N = 4 bosons interacting with a beam splitter, whose role is played by a δ-barrier. In particular, we focus on the effect of attractive interactions and compare the results with the repulsive case, as well as with the analytically available results for the non-interacting case (that we use as a benchmark). In addition, we observe a fermionization effect both for growing repulsive and attractive interactions, i.e., the dip in the HOM coincidence count is progressively smeared out, for increasing interaction strengths. The role of input asymmetries is also explored.

74 ATOMIC AND MOLECULAR PHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2020

Squaring the fermion: The threefold way and the fate of zero modes

In this work, we investigate topological properties and classification of mean-field theories of stable bosonic systems. Of the three standard classifying symmetries, only time reversal represents a real symmetry of the many-boson system, while the other two, particle-hole and chiral, are simply constraints that manifest as symmetries of the effective single-particle problem. For gapped systems in arbitrary space dimension, we establish three fundamental no-go theorems that prove the absence of parity switches, symmetry-protected-topological quantum phases, and localized bosonic zero modes under open boundary conditions. We then introduce a squaring, kernel-preserving map connecting noninteracting Hermitian theories of fermions and stable boson systems, which serves as a playground to reveal the role of topology in bosonic phases and their localized midgap boundary modes. Finally, we determine the symmetry classes inherited from the fermionic tenfold-way classification, unveiling an elegant threefold-way topological classification of noninteracting bosons. We illustrate our main findings in one- and two-dimensional bosonic lattice and field-theory models.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗
DOE OSTI2011

Observation of Work Functions, Metallicity, Band Bending, Interfacial Dipoles by EUPS for Characterizing High-k/Metal Interfaces

EUPS (EUV excited photoelectron spectroscopy) is a novel photoelectron spectroscopy technique, in which a sample is excited with 4.86 nm (255 eV), 3-ns pulse EUV light emitted from a laser-produced plasma and the resulting electron spectrum is analyzed with a time-of-flight (TOF) analyzer. EUPS gives information of the topmost atoms because the escape depth of photo-electrons excited by 4.86 nm light is only 0.5 nm. EUPS can evaluate band-bending because the peak density of the excitation light on the sample is extremely high, so that bent electronic bands in semiconductors can be flattened. Secondary electron spectra, from which the vacuum level of the material surface can be determined, are obtained very quickly owing to the use of a TOF analyzer, The metal gate related issues are one of the most challenging topics facing CMOS technology. This paper demonstrates EUPS as a powerful method for characterizing high-k/metal interfaces by showing data from direct observations of interfacial dipoles.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2018

Full commuting projector Hamiltonians of interacting symmetry-protected topological phases of fermions

In this work, using the decorated domain wall procedure, we construct finite-depth local unitaries that realize fermionic symmetry-protected topological (SPT) phases. This results in explicit full commuting projector Hamiltonians, where "full" implies the fact that the ground state as well as all excited states of these Hamiltonians realize the nontrivial SPT phase. We begin by constructing explicit examples of 1+1D phases protected by the symmetry group G =$\mathbb{Z}_2^T$×$\mathbb{Z}_2^F$, which also has a free fermion realization in class BDI, and by the symmetry group G =$\mathbb{Z}_4$×$\mathbb{Z}_4^F$, which does not. We then turn to 2+1D, and construct the square roots of the Levin-Gu bosonic SPT phase, protected by $\mathbb{Z}_2$×$\mathbb{Z}_2^F$ symmetry, in a concrete model of fermions and spins on the triangular lattice. Edge states and the anomalous symmetry action on them are explicitly derived. Although this phase has a free fermion representation as two copies of p + ip superconductors combined with their p - ip counterparts with a different symmetry charge, the full set of commuting projectors is only realized in the strongly interacting version, which also implies that it admits a many-body localized realization.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗
DOE OSTI2021

Interaction-induced topological phase transition and Majorana edge states in low-dimensional orbital-selective Mott insulators

Topological phases of matter are among the most intriguing research directions in Condensed Matter Physics. It is known that superconductivity induced on a topological insulator’s surface can lead to exotic Majorana modes, the main ingredient of many proposed quantum computation schemes. In this context, the iron-based high critical temperature superconductors are a promising platform to host such an exotic phenomenon in real condensed-matter compounds. The Coulomb interaction is commonly believed to be vital for the magnetic and superconducting properties of these systems. This work bridges these two perspectives and shows that the Coulomb interaction can also drive a canonical superconductor with orbital degrees of freedom into the topological state. Namely, we show that above a critical value of the Hubbard interaction the system simultaneously develops spiral spin order, a highly unusual triplet amplitude in superconductivity, and, remarkably, Majorana fermions at the edges of the system.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2019

Search for plasmons in isotropic Luttinger semimetals

Luttinger semimetals include materials like gray tin (α-Sn) and mercury telluride, which are three-dimensional gapless semiconductors having a quadratic band crossing point (QBCP). Due to a growing interest in QBCPs and new experimental efforts, it is essential to study the finite-temperature properties of such systems. In this paper, we investigate the emergence of plasmons in the presence of Coulomb interactions in isotropic Luttinger semimetals, for zero as well as generic nonzero temperatures. When the Fermi level lies right at the QBCP, which is the point where twofold degenerate conduction and valence bands touch each other quadratically, we find that plasmons cannot appear at zero temperature. However, for nonzero temperatures, thermal plasmons are generated. Whether they are long-lived or not depends on the values of temperature, effective electron mass and effective fine-structure constant, and the number of fermion flavors. We also numerically estimate the behavior of the inelastic scattering rate at nonzero temperatures, as a function of energy, where the signatures of the QBCP thermal plasmons show up as a sharp peak. Our results will thus serve as a guide to experimental probes on these systems.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗
DOE OSTI2011

Electron Bernstein Wave Studies in MST

The overdense plasma in an RFP prevents electromagnetic waves from propagating past the edge, however use of the electron Bernstein wave (EBW) has the potential to heat and drive current in the plasma. MHD simulations have demonstrated that resistive tearing mode stability is very sensitive to gradients in the edge current density profile allowing EBW to potentially be a stabilizing influence. A new MW level experiment is being commissioned on MST to evaluate the potential use of the EBW for current profile control on the RFP. The development of new equipment includes a 5.5 GHz klystron driven by a novel switchmode power supply. A quartz window has been constructed and coupling with a cylindrical molybdenum wave guide antenna has been studied. Due to the steep edge density gradient in the RFP, it is possible to efficiently couple to the EBW with O or X mode launch. The EBW is strongly damped at the electron cyclotron resonance where it couples to the electron gyromotion and alters the electron distribution. Either Fisch-Boozer or Ohkawa current drive mechanisms can be activated to drive off axis current in the plasma. Preliminary experiments have been performed to verify high power coupling and understand heating via observed x-ray emission when compared to Fokker-Plank modeling in CQL3D.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗
DOE OSTI2021

Temperature evolution of the phonon dynamics in the Kitaev spin liquid

In this work, we present a study of the phonon dynamics in the honeycomb Kitaev spin model at finite temperatures. We show that the fractionalized spin excitations of the Kitaev spin liquid, the itinerant Majorana fermions, and static Z 2 fluxes have distinct effects on the phonon dynamics, which makes the phonon dynamics a promising tool for exploring the Kitaev spin liquid candidate materials. In particular, we focus on the signature of the fractionalized excitations in the thermodynamic behavior of the sound attenuation and the phonon Hall viscosity: the former describes the phonon decay into the fractionalized excitations, and the latter is the leading order time-reversal symmetry breaking effect on the acoustic phonon. We find that the angular dependence of the attenuation coefficient and its magnitude is modified by the thermal excitation of the Z 2 fluxes. The strength of this effect strongly depends on the relative magnitude of the sound velocity and the Fermi velocity characterizing the low-energy Majorana fermions. We also show that the Hall viscosity is strongly suppressed by the increase of the density of the Z 2 fluxes at finite temperatures. All these observations reflect the effects of the emergent disorder on the Majorana fermions introduced by the Z 2 fluxes. Our analysis is based on the complementary analytical calculations in the low-temperature zero-flux sector, and numerical calculations in the inhomogeneous flux sectors at intermediate and high temperatures with stratified Monte Carlo (strMC) method.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗
DOE OSTI2022

Reshaped Weyl fermionic dispersions driven by Coulomb interactions in MoTe 2

In this work, we report the direct evidence of impacts of the Coulomb interaction in a prototypical Weyl semimetal, MoTe 2 , that alter its bare bands in a wide range of energy and momentum. Our quasiparticle interference patterns measured using scanning tunneling microscopy are shown to match the joint density of states of quasiparticle energy bands including momentum-dependent self-energy corrections, while electronic energy bands based on the other simpler local approximations of the Coulomb interaction fail to explain neither the correct number of quasiparticle pockets nor the shape of their dispersions observed in our spectrum. With this, we predict a transition between type-I and type-II Weyl fermions with doping and resolve its disparate quantum oscillation experiments, thus highlighting the critical roles of Coulomb interactions in layered Weyl semimetals.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗
DOE OSTI2015

Two-dimensional superconductor-insulator quantum phase transitions in an electron-doped cuprate

Here, we use an ionic liquid-assisted electric-field effect to tune the carrier density in an electron-doped cuprate ultrathin film and cause a two-dimensional superconductor-insulator transition (SIT). The low upper critical field in this system allows us to perform magnetic-field (B)-induced SIT in the liquid-gated superconducting film. Finite-size scaling analysis indicates that SITs induced both by electric and by magnetic fields are quantum phase transitions and the transitions are governed by percolation effects-quantum mechanical in the former and classical in the latter cases. Compared to the hole-doped cuprates, the SITs in the electron-doped system occur at critical sheet resistances (R c ) much lower than the pair quantum resistance R Q = h/(2e) 2 = 6.45 kΩ, suggesting the possible existence of fermionic excitations at finite temperatures at the insulating phase near the SITs.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗
DOE OSTI2019

Enhanced Hybridization Sets the Stage for Electronic Nematicity in CeRhIn 5

High magnetic fields induce a pronounced in-plane electronic anisotropy in the tetragonal antiferromagnetic metal CeRhIn 5 at H* ≳ 30 T for fields ≃20° off the $c$ axis. Here in this paper, we investigate the response of the underlying crystal lattice in magnetic fields to 45 T via high-resolution dilatometry. At low fields, a finite magnetic field component in the tetragonal $ab$ plane explicitly breaks the tetragonal (C 4 ) symmetry of the lattice revealing a finite nematic susceptibility. A modest a-axis expansion at H * hence marks the crossover to a fluctuating nematic phase with large nematic susceptibility. Magnetostriction quantum oscillations confirm a Fermi surface change at H * with the emergence of new orbits. By analyzing the field-induced change in the crystal-field ground state, we conclude that the in-plane Ce $f$ hybridization is enhanced at H * , in agreement with the in-plane lattice expansion. We argue that the nematic behavior observed in this prototypical heavy-fermion material is of electronic origin, and is driven by the hybridization between 4$f$ and conduction electrons which carries the $f$-electron anisotropy to the Fermi surface.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗
DOE OSTI2019

Nearly ferromagnetic spin-triplet superconductivity

Spin-triplet superconductors potentially host topological excitations that are of interest for quantum information processing. We report the discovery of spin-triplet superconductivity in UTe 2 , featuring a transition temperature of 1.6 kelvin and a very large and anisotropic upper critical field exceeding 40 teslas. This superconducting phase stability suggests that UTe 2 is related to ferromagnetic superconductors such as UGe 2 , URhGe, and UCoGe. However, the lack of magnetic order and the observation of quantum critical scaling place UTe 2 at the paramagnetic end of this ferromagnetic superconductor series. A large intrinsic zero-temperature reservoir of ungapped fermions indicates a highly unconventional type of superconducting pairing.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗
DOE OSTI2018

Gross–Neveu–Wilson model and correlated symmetry-protected topological phases

We show that a Wilson-type discretization of the Gross–Neveu model, a fermionic N-flavor quantum field theory displaying asymptotic freedom and chiral symmetry breaking, can serve as a playground to explore correlated symmetry-protected phases of matter using techniques borrowed from high-energy physics. A large-N study, both in the Hamiltonian and Euclidean formalisms, yields a phase diagram with trivial, topological, and symmetry-broken phases separated by critical lines that meet at a tri-critical point. We benchmark these predictions using tools from condensed matter and quantum information science, which show that the large-N method captures the essence of the phase diagram even at N=1. Moreover, we describe a cold-atom scheme for the quantum simulation of this lattice model, which would allow to explore the single-flavor phase diagram.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
DOE OSTI2019

Self-dual ν = 1 bosonic quantum Hall state in mixed-dimensional QED

Here, we consider a (2 + 1)-dimensional Wilson-Fisher boson coupled to a (3 + 1)-dimensional U(1) gauge field. This theory possesses a strong-weak duality in terms of the coupling constant e and is self-dual at a particular value of $\mathcal{e}$. We derive exact relations between transport coefficients for a $\mathcal{ν}$ = 1 quantum Hall state at the self-dual point. Using boson-fermion duality, we map the $\mathcal{ν}$ = 1 bosonic quantum Hall state to a Fermi sea of the dual fermion and observe that the exact relationships between transport coefficients at the bosonic self-dual point are reproduced by a simple random-phase approximation (RPA), coupled with a Drude formula, in the fermionic theory. We explain this success of the RPA by pointing out a cancellation of a parity-breaking term in the fermion theory which occurs only at the self-dual point, resulting in the fermion self-dual theory explored previously. In addition, we argue that the equivalence of the self-dual structure can be understood in terms of electromagnetic duality or modular invariance, and these features are not inherited by the nonrelativistic cousins of the present model.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗
DOE OSTI2017

Temperature and angular dependence of the upper critical field in K 2 Cr 3 As 3

We report measurements of the upper critical field H c2 as functions of temperature T, polar angle θ (of the field direction with respect to the crystallographic c axis), and azimuthal angle Φ (of the field direction relative to the a axis within the ab plane) for the Cr-based superconductor K 2 Cr 3 As 3 with a quasi-one-dimensional and noncentrosymmetric crystal structure. We confirm that the anisotropy in Hc 2 (T) becomes inverse with decreasing temperature. At low temperatures, H c2 (θ) data are featured by two maxima at θ = 0 (H∥ c ) and π/2 (H⊥c), which can be quantitatively understood only if uniaxial effective-mass anisotropy and absence of Pauli paramagnetic effect for H⊥c are taken simultaneously into consideration. The in-plane H c2 (Φ) profile shows a unique threefold modulation especially at low temperatures. Overall, the characteristics of the H c2 (θ, Φ, T) data mostly resemble those of the heavy-fermion superconductor UPt 3 , and we argue in favor of a dominant spin-triplet superconductivity with odd parity in K 2 Cr 3 As 3 .

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗