No Arabic abstract
The effect of dimensionality on materials properties has become strikingly evident with the recent discovery of graphene. Charge ordering phenomena can be induced in one dimension by periodic distortions of a materials crystal structure, termed Peierls ordering transition. Charge-density waves can also be induced in solids by strong Coulomb repulsion between carriers, and at the extreme limit, Wigner predicted that crystallization itself can be induced in an electrons gas in free space close to the absolute zero of temperature. Similar phenomena are observed also in higher dimensions, but the microscopic description of the corresponding phase transition is often controversial, and remains an open field of research for fundamental physics. Here, we photoinduce the melting of the charge ordering in a complex three-dimensional solid and monitor the consequent charge redistribution by probing the optical response over a broad spectral range with ultrashort laser pulses. Although the photoinduced electronic temperature far exceeds the critical value, the charge-density wave is preserved until the lattice is sufficiently distorted to induce the phase transition. Combining this result with it ab initio} electronic structure calculations, we identified the Peierls origin of multiple charge-density waves in a three-dimensional system for the first time.
Since their theoretical prediction by Peierls in the 30s, charge density waves (CDW) have been one of the most commonly encountered electronic phases in low dimensional metallic systems. The instability mechanism originally proposed combines Fermi surface nesting and electron-phonon coupling but is, strictly speaking, only valid in one dimension. In higher dimensions, its relevance is questionable as sharp maxima in the static electronic susceptibility chi(q) are smeared out, and are, in many cases, unable to account for the periodicity of the observed charge modulations. Here, we investigate the quasi twodimensional LaAgSb2, which exhibits two CDW transitions, by a combination of diffuse xray scattering, inelastic x-ray scattering and ab initio calculations. We demonstrate that the CDW formation is driven by phonons softening. The corresponding Kohn anomalies are visualized in 3D through the momentum distribution of the x-ray diffuse scattering intensity. We show that they can be quantitatively accounted for by considering the electronic susceptibility calculated from a Dirac-like band, weighted by anisotropic electron-phonon coupling. This remarkable agreement sheds new light on the importance of Fermi surface nesting in CDW formation.
We analyze the instability of an unpolarized uniform quantum plasma consisting of two oppositely charged fermionic components with varying mass ratios, against charge and spin density waves (CDWs and SDWs). Using density functional theory, we treat each component with the local spin density approximation and a rescaled exchange-correlation functional. Interactions between different components are treated with a mean-field approximation. In both two- and three-dimensions, we find leading unstable CDW modes in the second-order expansion of the energy functional, which would induce the transition to quantum liquid crystals. The transition point and the length of the wave-vector are computed numerically. Discontinuous ranges of the wave-vector are found for different mass ratios between the two components, indicating exotic quantum phase transitions. Phase diagrams are obtained and a scaling relation is proposed to generalize the results to two-component fermionic plasmas with any mass scale. We discuss the implications of our results and directions for further improvement in treating quantum plasmas.
We use Density Matrix Renormalization Group to study a one-dimensional chain with Peierls electron-phonon coupling describing the modulation of the electron hopping due to lattice distortion. We demonstrate the appearance of an exotic phase-separated state, which we call Peierls phase separation, in the limit of very dilute electron densities, for sufficiently large couplings and small phonon frequencies. This is unexpected, given that Peierls coupling mediates effective pair-hopping interactions that disfavor phase clustering. The Peierls phase separation consists of a homogenous, dimerized, electron-rich region surrounded by electron-poor regions, which we show to be energetically more favorable than a dilute liquid of bipolarons. This mechanism qualitatively differs from that of typical phase separation in conventional electron-phonon models that describe the modulation of the electrons potential energy due to lattice distortions. Surprisingly, the electron-rich region always stabilizes a dimerized pattern at fractional densities, hinting at a non-perturbative correlation-driven mechanism behind phase separation.
We consider the one-dimensional extended Hubbard model in the presence of an explicit dimerization $delta$. For a sufficiently strong nearest neighbour repulsion we establish the existence of a quantum phase transition between a mixed bond-order wave and charge-density wave phase from a pure bond-order wave phase. This phase transition is in the universality class of the two-dimensional Ising model.
We report optical spectra of Lu$_5$Ir$_4$Si$_{10}$ and Er$_5$Ir$_4$Si$_{10}$, exhibiting the phenomenon of coexisting superconductivity or antiferromagnetism and charge density wave (CDW) order. We measure the maximum value of the charge density wave gap present on part of the Fermi surface of Lu5Ir4Si10, corresponding to a ratio 2Delta/k_B T_CDW approx 10, well above the value in the limit of weak electron-phonon coupling. Strong electron-phonon coupling was confirmed by analyzing the optical conductivity with the Holstein model describing the electron-phonon interactions, indicating the coupling to phonons centered at 30 meV, with a coupling constant lambda approx 2.6. Finally we provide evidence that approximately 16 % of the Fermi surface of Lu5Ir4Si10 becomes gapped in the CDW state.