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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 811 records · Page 45
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2018

Superconductor–Insulator Transition in NbTiN Films

Experimental results indicating a direct disorder-induced superconductor-insulator transition in NbTiN thin films have been reported. It has been shown that an increase in the resistance per square in the normal state is accompanied by the suppression of the critical temperature of the superconducting transition T c according to the fermion mechanism of suppression of superconductivity by disorder. At the same time, the temperature of the Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless transition is completely suppressed at a nonzero critical temperature and, then, the ground state changes to insulating, which is characteristic of the boson model of suppression of superconductivity by disorder. Furthermore it has been shown that the temperature dependences of the resistance of insulating films follow the Arrhenius activation law.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗
DOE OSTI2023

Nonlinear photoconductivities and quantum geometry of chiral multifold fermions

Here, chiral multifold fermions are quasiparticles that appear only in chiral crystals such as transition metal silicides in the cubic B20 structure (i.e., the CoSi family), and they may show exotic physical properties. Here we study the injection and shift photoconductivities and also the related geometrical quantities for several types of chiral multifold fermions, including spin-1/2 as well as pseudospin-1 and -3/2 fermions, dubbed as Kramers Weyl, triple-point, and Rarita-Schwinger-Weyl (RSW) fermions, respectively. We utilize the minimal symmorphic model to describe the triple-point fermions (TPF). We also consider the more realistic model Hamiltonian for the CoSi family including both linear and quadratic terms. We find that injection currents due to circularly polarized light are quantized as a result of the Chern numbers carried by the multifold fermions within the linear models. Surprisingly, we discover that in the TPF model, the linear shift conductivities, responsible for the shift current generation by linearly polarized light, are proportional to the pseudo spin-orbit coupling and independent of photon frequency. In contrast, for the RSW and Kramer Weyl fermions, the linear shift conductivity is linearly proportional to photon frequency. The numerical results agree with the power-counting analysis for quadratic Hamiltonians. The frequency independence of the linear shift conductivity could be attributed to the strong resonant symplectic Christoffel symbols of the flat bands. Moreover, the calculated symplectic Christoffel symbols show significant peaks at the nodes, suggesting that the shift currents are due to the strong geometrical response near the topological nodes.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗
DOE OSTI2017

Tunnel transport and interlayer excitons in bilayer fractional quantum Hall systems

In a bilayer system consisting of a composite-fermion Fermi sea in each layer, the tunnel current is exponentially suppressed at zero bias, followed by a strong peak at a finite bias voltage V max . This behavior, which is qualitatively different from that observed for the electron Fermi sea, provides fundamental insight into the strongly correlated non-Fermi liquid nature of the CF Fermi sea and, in particular, offers a window into the short-distance high-energy physics of this highly non-trivial state. We identify the exciton responsible for the peak current and provide a quantitative account of the value of V max . The excitonic attraction is shown to be quantitatively significant, and its variation accounts for the increase of V max with the application of an in-plane magnetic field. Here, we also estimate the critical Zeeman energy where transition occurs from a fully spin polarized composite fermion Fermi sea to a partially spin polarized one, carefully incorporating corrections due to finite width and Landau level mixing, and find it to be in satisfactory agreement with the Zeeman energy where a qualitative change has been observed for the onset bias voltage. For fractional quantum Hall states, we predict a substantial discontinuous jump in V max when the system undergoes a transition from a fully spin polarized state to a spin singlet or a partially spin polarized state.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗
DOE OSTI2014

Spin Josephson effect in topological superconductor-ferromagnet junction

The composite topological superconductor (TS), made of one-dimensional spin-orbit coupled nanowire with proximity-induced s-wave superconductivity, is not a pure p-wave superconductor but still has a suppressed s-wave pairing. We propose to probe the spin texture of the p-wave pairing in this composite TS by examining possible spin supercurrents in an unbiased TS/ferromagnet junction. It is found that both the exchange-coupling induced and spin-flip reflection induced spin currents exist in the setup and survive even in the topological phase. We showed that besides the nontrivial p-wave pairing state accounting for Majorana Fermions, there shall be a trivial p-wave pairing state that contributes to spin supercurrent. The trivial p-wave pairing state is diagnosed from the mixing effect between the suppressed s-wave pairing and the topologically nontrivial p-wave pairing. The d vector of the TS is proved not to be rigorously perpendicular to the spin projection of p-wave pairings. Our findings are also confirmed by the Kitaev's p-wave model with a nonzero s-wave pairing.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗
DOE OSTI2019

Evidence for a strain-tuned topological phase transition in ZrTe 5

A phase transition between topologically distinct insulating phases involves closing and reopening the bandgap. Near the topological phase transition, the bulk energy spectrum is characterized by a massive Dirac dispersion, where the bandgap plays the role of mass. We report measurements of strain dependence of electrical transport properties of ZrTe 5 , which is known to host massive Dirac fermions in the bulk due to its proximity to a topological phase transition. We observe that the resistivity exhibits a pronounced minimum at a critical strain. We further find that the positive longitudinal magnetoconductance becomes maximal at the critical strain. This nonmonotonic strain dependence is consistent with the switching of sign of the Dirac mass and, hence, a strain-tuned topological phase transition in ZrTe 5 .

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗
DOE OSTI2018

Localization of Interacting Dirac Fermions

By using exact quantum Monte Carlo calculations, we examine the interplay between localization of electronic states driven by many-body correlations and that by randomness in a two-dimensional system featuring linearly vanishing density of states at the Fermi level. A novel disorder-induced nonmagnetic insulating phase is found to emerge from the zero-temperature quantum critical point separating a semimetal and a Mott insulator. Within this phase, a phase transition from a gapless Anderson-like insulator to a gapped Mott-like insulator is identified. Implications of the phase diagram are also discussed.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗
DOE OSTI2020

Observation of Weyl fermions in a magnetic non-centrosymmetric crystal

The absence of inversion symmetry in non-centrosymmetric materials has a fundamental role in the emergence of a vast number of fascinating phenomena, like ferroelectricity, second harmonic generation, and Weyl fermions. The removal of time-reversal symmetry in such systems further extends the variety of observable magneto-electric and topological effects. Here we report the striking topological properties in the non-centrosymmetric spin-orbit magnet PrAlGe by combining spectroscopy and transport measurements. By photoemission spectroscopy below the Curie temperature, we observe topological Fermi arcs that correspond to projected topological charges of ±1 in the surface Brillouin zone. In the bulk, we observe the linear energy-dispersion of the Weyl fermions. We further observe a large anomalous Hall response in our magneto-transport measurements, which is understood to arise from diverging bulk Berry curvature fields associated with the Weyl band structure. These results establish a novel Weyl semimetal phase in magnetic non-centrosymmetric PrAlGe.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗
DOE OSTI2013

Bloch-Zener oscillations in a tunable optical honeycomb lattice

Ultracold gases in optical lattices have proved to be a flexible tool to simulate many different phenomena of solid state physics [1, 2]. Recently, optical lattices with complex geometries have been realized [3, 4, 5, 6, 7], paving the way to simulating more realistic systems. The honeycomb structure has recently become accessible in an optical lattice composed of mutually perpendicular laser beams. This lattice structure exhibits topological features in its band structure – the Dirac points. At these points, two energy bands intersect linearly and the particles behave as relativistic Dirac fermions. In optical lattices, Bloch oscillations [8] resolved both in time and in quasi-momentum space can be directly observed. We make use of such Bloch-Zener oscillations to probe the vanishing energy gap at the Dirac points as well as their position in the band structure. In small band gap regions, we observe Landau-Zener tunneling [7, 9] to the second band and the regions of maximum transfer can be identified with the position of the Dirac points.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗
DOE OSTI2020

Pairing glue in cuprate superconductors from the self-energy revealed via machine learning

Recently, machine learning was applied to extract both the normal and the anomalous components of the self-energy from photoemission data at the antinodal points in Bi– based cuprate high-temperature superconductors. It was argued that both components do show prominent peaks near 50 meV, which hold information about the pairing glue, but the peaks are hidden in the actual data, which measure only the total self-energy. We analyze the self-energy within an effective fermion-boson theory. We show that soft thermal fluctuations give rise to peaks in both components of the self-energy at a frequency comparable to the superconducting gap, while they cancel in the total self-energy, all irrespective of the nature of the pairing boson. Furthermore, in the quantum limit T → 0 prominent peaks survive only for a very restricted subclass of pairing interactions. We argue that the way to potentially nail down the pairing boson is to determine the thermal evolution of the peaks.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗
DOE OSTI2022

Evolution of electronic and magnetic properties in the topological semimetal SmSb x Te 2– x

The ZrSiS-type materials have attracted intensive attention due to the existence of various topological fermions. The magnetic version of the ZrSiS-type materials, L n SbTe(L n = lanthanides), is an ideal candidate to explore novel exotic states due to the interaction between magnetism and topology. In this work, we report the experimental study on structural, magnetic, thermodynamic, and electronic properties for SmSb x Te 2– x with various Sb content. Further, the revealed evolutions of these properties with tuning the compositions would provide useful insights for the fundamental topological physics and the future applications.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗
DOE OSTI2015

Evolution of hyperfine parameters across a quantum critical point in CeRhIn 5

Here, we report nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) data for both the In(1) and In(2) sites in the heavy-fermion material CeRhIn 5 under hydrostatic pressure. The Knight shift data reveal a suppression of the hyperfine coupling to the In(1) site as a function of pressure, and the electric field gradient ν αα at the In(2) site exhibits a change of slope dν αα /dP at P c1 = 1.75 GPa. These changes to the coupling constants reflect alterations to the electronic structure at the quantum critical point.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗
DOE OSTI2019

Ladderlike optical conductivity in the spin-fermion model

In the nested limit of the spin-fermion model for the cuprates, one-dimensional physics in the form of half-filled two-leg ladders emerges. We show here that the renormalization group flow of the corresponding ladder is towards the $d$-Mott phase, a gapped spin-liquid with short-ranged $d$-wave pairing correlations, and reveals an intermediate $\mathrm{SO}(5)\times{}\mathrm{SO}(3)$ symmetry. We use the results of the renormalization group in combination with a memory-function approach to calculate the optical conductivity of the spin-fermion model in the high-frequency regime, where processes within the hot spot region dominate the transport. We argue that umklapp processes play a major role. For finite temperatures, we determine the resistivity in the zero-frequency (dc) limit. Our results show an approximate linear temperature dependence of the resistivity and a conductivity that follows a nonuniversal power law. A comparison to experimental data supports our assumption that the conductivity is dominated by the antinodal contribution above the pseudogap.

1-dimensional systems↗
DOE OSTI2017

Topological crystalline magnets: Symmetry-protected topological phases of fermions

Here, we introduce a novel class of interaction-enabled topological crystalline insulators in two- and three-dimensional electronic systems, which we call “topological crystalline magnet.” It is protected by the product of the time-reversal symmetry T and a mirror symmetry or a rotation symmetry R . A topological crystalline magnet exhibits two intriguing features: (i) it cannot be adiabatically connected to any Slater insulator and (ii) the edge state is robust against coupling electrons to the edge. These features are protected by the anomalous symmetry transformation property ( RT ) 2 = -1 of the edge state. Finally, an anisotropic response to the external magnetic field can be an experimental signature.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗
DOE OSTI2023

Topological enhancement of nonlinear transport in unconventional point-node semimetals

The topological singularity of the Bloch states close to the Fermi level significantly enhances nonlinear electric responses in topological semimetals. Here, we systematically characterize this enhancement for a large class of topological nodal-point fermions, including those with linear, linear-quadratic, and quadratic dispersions. Specifically, we determine the leading power-law dependence of the nonlinear response functions on the chemical potential μ defined relative to the nodal point. We identify two characteristics that qualitatively improve nonlinear transports compared to those of conventional Dirac and Weyl fermions. First, the type-II (overtilted) spectrum leads to the log μ enhancement of nonlinear response functions having zero scaling dimension with respect to μ, which is not seen in a type-I (moderately or not tilted) spectrum. Second, the anisotropic linear-quadratic dispersion increases the power of small-μ divergence for the nonlinear response tensors along the linearly dispersing direction. Furthermore, our work reveals new experimental signatures of unconventional nodal points in topological semimetals as well as provides a guiding principle for giant nonlinear electric responses.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗
DOE OSTI2018

Communicating through a sea of frustration: Zero-temperature triangular Ising antiferromagnet on a cylinder

‘‘Communication” through the frustrated ground state of a classical triangular Ising antiferromagnet wrapped on a cylinder is studied via reformulation as imaginary-time evolution of a system of fermions on a ring, detailing a breakdown of the ordinary Perron-Frobenius scenario for disordered one-dimensional systems. For instance, constraint of the configuration at one cylinder end allows infinite-range, albeit partial, control of the state. Mutual information between end configurations under open boundary conditions, which measures the strength of the correlations, has an asymptotic decay with a complex dependence on cylinder circumference and spin (anti)periodicity. In some cases, the decay is not even exponential in length, but inverse square.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗
DOE OSTI2021

Evidence for correlation effects in noncentrosymmetric type-II Weyl semimetals

Topological fermions have mainly been addressed in the limit of weakly correlated systems, while the realization of Kondo-like physics arising from Dirac-Weyl fermions and implying strong correlations is rare. The noncentrosymmetric Weyl fermion R AlGe compounds (with R = La and Ce) provide a promising playground for revealing the impact of electronic correlations driven by f-electron states on Weyl fermions. Here, we tackle their charge dynamics as a function of temperature. Besides spotting typical optical signatures of a type-II Weyl semimetal in both materials, we discover that electronic correlations at low temperatures renormalize the nontrivial bands hosting the Weyl nodes and lead to a reduction of the Fermi velocity as well as an enhancement of the charge carriers effective mass in CeAlGe with respect to LaAlGe, both being a fingerprint of a so-called Weyl-Kondo system.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗
DOE OSTI2013

Nuclear magnetic resonance studies of pseudospin fluctuations in URu 2 Si 2

Here, we report 29 Si nuclear magnetic resonance measurements in single crystals and aligned powders of URu 2 Si 2 in the hidden order and paramagnetic phases. The spin-lattice relaxation data reveal evidence of pseudospin fluctuations of U moments in the paramagnetic phase. We find evidence for partial suppression of the density of states below 30 K and analyze the data in terms of a two-component spin-fermion model. We propose that this behavior is a realization of a pseudogap between the hidden-order transition T HO and 30 K. This behavior is then compared to other materials that demonstrate precursor fluctuations in a pseudogap regime above a ground state with long-range order.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗