No Arabic abstract
We report the pressure dependence of the optical response of LaTe$_2$, which is deep in the charge-density-wave (CDW) ground state even at 300 K. The reflectivity spectrum is collected in the mid-infrared spectral range at room temperature and at pressures between 0 and 7 GPa. We extract the energy scale due to the single particle excitation across the CDW gap and the Drude weight. We establish that the gap decreases upon compressing the lattice, while the Drude weight increases. This signals a reduction in the quality of nesting upon applying pressure, therefore inducing a lesser impact of the CDW condensate on the electronic properties of LaTe$_2$. The consequent suppression of the CDW gap leads to a release of additional charge carriers, manifested by the shift of weight from the gap feature into the metallic component of the optical response. On the contrary, the power-law behavior, seen in the optical conductivity at energies above the gap excitation and indicating a weakly interacting limit within the Tomonaga-Luttinger liquid scenario, seems to be only moderately dependent on pressure.
We investigate the rare-earth polychalcogenide $R_2$Te$_5$ ($R$=Nd, Sm and Gd) charge-density-wave (CDW) compounds by optical methods. From the absorption spectrum we extract the excitation energy of the CDW gap and estimate the fraction of the Fermi surface which is gapped by the formation of the CDW condensate. In analogy to previous findings on the related $R$Te$_n$ (n=2 and 3) families, we establish the progressive closing of the CDW gap and the moderate enhancement of the metallic component upon chemically compressing the lattice.
A prototypical quasi-2D metallic compound, 1T-TaS_2 has been extensively studied due to an intricate interplay between a Mott-insulating ground state and a charge density-wave (CDW) order. In the low-temperature phase, 12 out of 13 Ta_{4+} 5textit{d}-electrons form molecular orbitals in hexagonal star-of-David patterns, leaving one 5textit{d}-electron with textit{S} = 1/2 spin free. This orphan quantum spin with a large spin-orbit interaction is expected to form a highly correlated phase of its own. And it is most likely that they will form some kind of a short-range order out of a strongly spin-orbit coupled Hilbert space. In order to investigate the low-temperature magnetic properties, we performed a series of measurements including neutron scattering and muon experiments. The obtained data clearly indicate the presence of the short-ranged phase and put the upper bound on ~ 0.4 textit{mu}_B for the size of the magnetic moment, consistent with the orphan-spin scenario.
We investigate the pressure dependence of the optical properties of CeTe$_3$, which exhibits an incommensurate charge-density-wave (CDW) state already at 300 K. Our data are collected in the mid-infrared spectral range at room temperature and at pressures between 0 and 9 GPa. The energy for the single particle excitation across the CDW gap decreases upon increasing the applied pressure, similarly to the chemical pressure by rare-earth substitution. The broadening of the bands upon lattice compression removes the perfect nesting condition of the Fermi surface and therefore diminishes the impact of the CDW transition on the electronic properties of $R$Te$_3$.
We present a state-of-the-art x-ray diffraction study of the charge density wave order in 1T-TaS2 as a function of temperature and pressure. Our results prove that the charge density wave, which we characterize in terms of wave vector, amplitude and the coherence length, indeed exists in the superconducting region of the phase diagram. The data further imply that the ordered charge density wave structure as a whole becomes superconducting at low temperatures, i. e, superconductivity and charge density wave coexist on a macroscopic scale in real space. This result is fundamentally different from a previously proposed separation of superconducting and insulating regions in real space and, instead, provides evidence that the superconducting and the charge density wave gap exist in separate regions of reciprocal space.
The semimetallic or semiconducting nature of the transition metal dichalcogenide 1$T$-TiSe$_2$ remains under debate after many decades mainly due to the fluctuating nature of its 2 $times$ 2 $times$ 2 charge-density-wave (CDW) phase at room-temperature. In this letter, using angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy, we unambiguously demonstrate that the 1$T$-TiSe$_2$ normal state is semimetallic with an electron-hole band overlap of $sim$110 meV by probing the low-energy electronic states of the perturbed CDW phase strongly doped by alkali atoms. Our study not only closes a long-standing debate but also supports the central role of the Fermi surface for driving the CDW and superconducting instabilities in 1$T$-TiSe$_2$.