No Arabic abstract
Unconventional superconductivity typically occurs in materials in which a small change of a parameter such as bandwidth or doping leads to antiferromagnetic or Mott insulating phases. As such competing phases are approached, the properties of the superconductor often become increasingly exotic. For example, in organic superconductors and underdoped high-$T_mathrm{c}$ cuprate superconductors a fluctuating superconducting state persists to temperatures significantly above $T_mathrm{c}$. By studying alloys of quasi-two-dimensional organic molecular metals in the $kappa$-(BEDT-TTF)$_2$X family, we reveal how the Nernst effect, a sensitive probe of superconducting phase fluctuations, evolves in the regime of extreme Mott criticality. We find strong evidence that, as the phase diagram is traversed through superconductivity towards the Mott state, the temperature scale for superconducting fluctuations increases dramatically, eventually approaching the temperature at which quasiparticles become identifiable at all.
In multi-band metals quasi-particles arising from different atomic orbitals coexist at a common Fermi surface. Superconductivity in these materials may appear due to interactions within a band (intra-band) or among the distinct metallic bands (inter-band). Here we consider the suppression of superconductivity in the intra-band case due to hybridization. The fluctuations at the superconducting quantum critical point (SQCP) are obtained calculating the response of the system to a fictitious space and time dependent field, which couples to the superconducting order parameter. The appearance of superconductivity is related to the divergence of a generalized susceptibility. For a single band superconductor this coincides with the textit{Thouless criterion}. For fixed chemical potential and large hybridization, the superconducting state has many features in common with breached pair superconductivity with unpaired electrons at the Fermi surface. The T=0 phase transition from the superconductor to the normal state is in the universality class of the density-driven Bose-Einstein condensation. For fixed number of particles and in the strong coupling limit, the system still has an instability to the normal sate with increasing hybridization.
Magnetic structures of organic Mott insulators X[Pd(dmit)2]2 (X=Me4P, Me4Sb), of which electronic states are located near quantum spin liquid (X=EtMe3Sb), are demonstrated by 13C NMR. Antiferromagnetic spectra and nuclear relaxations show two distinct magnetic moments within each Pd(dmit)2 molecule, which cannot be described by single band dimer-Mott model and requires intramolecular electronic correlation. This unconventional fragmentation of S = 1/2 electron spin with strong quantum fluctuation is presumably caused by nearly degenerated intramolecular multiple orbitals, and shares a notion of quantum liquids where electronic excitations are fractionalized and S = 1/2 spin is no longer an elementary particle.
The terahertz (THz) response in 10-100 cm^-1 was investigated in an organic dimer-Mott (DM) insulator kappa-(ET)_2Cu_2(CN)_3 that exhibits a relaxor-like dielectric anomaly. 30 cm^-1 band in the optical conductivity was attributable to collective excitation of the intra-dimer electric dipoles which are formed by an electron correlation. We succeeded in observing photoinduced enhancement of this 30 cm^-1 band, reflecting the growth of the electric dipole cluster in the DM phase. Such optical responses in kappa-(ET)_2Cu_2(CN)_3 reflect instability near the boundary between the DM-ferroelectric charge ordered phases.
Motivated by recent experimental realizations of polar metals with broken inversion symmetry, we explore the emergence of strong correlations driven by criticality when the polar transition temperature is tuned to zero. Overcoming previously discussed challenges, we demonstrate a robust mechanism for coupling between the critical mode and electrons in multiband metals. We identify and characterize several novel interacting phases, including non-Fermi liquids, when band crossings are close to the Fermi level and present their experimental signatures for three generic types of band crossings.
Theoretically, it is commonly held that in metals near a nematic quantum critical point the electronic excitations become incoherent on the entire `hot Fermi surface, triggering non Fermi liquid behavior. However, such conclusions are based on electron-only theories, ignoring a symmetry-allowed coupling between the electronic nematic variable and a suitable crystalline lattice strain. Here we show that including this coupling leads to entirely different conclusions because the critical fluctuations are mostly cutoff by the non-critical lattice shear modes. At sufficiently low temperatures the thermodynamics remain Fermi liquid type, while, depending on the Fermi surface geometry, either the entire Fermi surface stays cold, or at most there are hot spots. In particular, our predictions are relevant for the iron-based superconductors.