No Arabic abstract
Half-metallicity (full spin polarization of the Fermi surface) usually occurs in strongly correlated electron systems. We demonstrate that doping a spin-density wave insulator in the weak-coupling regime may also stabilize half-metallic states. The undoped spin-density wave is formed by four nested bands [i.e., each band is characterized by charge (electron/hole) and spin (up/down) labels]. Of these four bands only two accumulate the doped carriers, forming a half-metallic two-valley Fermi surface. Depending on parameters, the spin polarizations of the electron-like and hole-like valleys may be (i) parallel or (ii) antiparallel. The Fermi surface of (i) is fully spin-polarized (similar to usual half-metals). Case (ii), referred to as a spin-valley half-metal, corresponds to complete polarization with respect to the spin-valley operator. The properties of these states are discussed.
A few years ago we predicted theoretically that in systems with nesting of the Fermi surface the spin-valley half-metal has lower energy than the spin density wave state. In this paper we suggest a possible way to distinguish these phases experimentally. We calculate dynamical spin susceptibility tensor for both states in the framework of the Kubo formalism. Discussed phases have different numbers of the bands: four bands in the spin-valley half-metal and only two bands in the spin density wave. Therefore, their susceptibilities, as functions of frequency, have different number of peaks. Besides, the spin-valley half-metal does not have rotational symmetry, thus, in general the off-diagonal components of susceptibility tensor are non-zero. The spin density wave obeys robust rotational symmetry and off-diagonal components of the susceptibility tensor are zero. These characteristic features can be observed in experiments with inelastic neutron scattering.
Half-metals have fully spin polarized charge carriers at the Fermi surface. Such polarization usually occurs due to strong electron--electron correlations. Recently [Phys. Rev. Lett. {bf{119}}, 107601 (2017)], we have demonstrated theoretically that adding (or removing) electrons to systems with Fermi surface nesting also stabilizes the half-metallic states even in the weak-coupling regime. In the absence of doping, the ground state of the system is a spin or charge density wave, formed by four nested bands. Each of these bands is characterized by charge (electron/hole) and spin (up/down) labels. Only two of these bands accumulate charge carriers introduced by doping, forming a half-metallic two-valley Fermi surface. Analysis demonstrates that two types of such half-metallicity can be stabilized. The first type corresponds to the full spin polarization of the electrons and holes at the Fermi surface. The second type, with antiparallel spins in electron-like and hole-like valleys, is referred to as a spin-valley half-metal and corresponds to the complete polarization with respect to the spin-valley operator. We analyze spin and spin-valley currents and possible superconductivity in these systems. We show that spin or spin-valley currents can flow in both half-metallic phases.
Using symmetry breaking strain to tune the valley occupation of a two-dimensional (2D) electron system in an AlAs quantum well, together with an applied in-plane magnetic field to tune the spin polarization, we independently control the systems valley and spin degrees of freedom and map out a spin-valley phase diagram for the 2D metal-insulator transition. The insulating phase occurs in the quadrant where the system is both spin- and valley-polarized. This observation establishes the equivalent roles of spin and valley degrees of freedom in the 2D metal-insulator transition.
Recent experiments have observed correlated insulating and possible superconducting phases in twisted homobilayer transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs). Besides the spin-valley locked moire bands due to the intrinsic Ising spin-orbit coupling, homobilayer moire TMDs also possess either logarithmic or power-law divergent Van Hove singularities (VHS) near the Fermi surface, controllable by an external displacement field. The former and the latter are dubbed conventional and higher-order VHS, respectively. Here, we perform a perturbative renormalization group (RG) analysis to unbiasedly study the dominant instabilities in homobilayer TMDs for both the conventional and higher-order VHS cases. We find that the spin-valley locking largely alters the RG flows and leads to instabilities unexpected in the corresponding extensively-studied graphene-based moire systems, such as spin- and valley-polarized ferromagnetism and topological superconductivity with mixed parity. In particular, for the case with two higher-order VHS, we find a spin-valley-locking-driven metallic state with no symmetry breaking in the TMDs despite the diverging bare susceptibility. Our results show how the spin-valley locking significantly affects the RG analysis and demonstrate that moire TMDs are suitable platforms to realize various interaction-induced spin-valley locked phases, highlighting physics fundamentally different from the well-studied graphene-based moire systems.
The metallic transition-metal dichalcogenides (TMDCs) are benchmark systems for studying and controlling intertwined electronic orders in solids, with superconductivity developing upon cooling from a charge density wave state. The interplay between such phases is thought to play a critical role in the unconventional superconductivity of cuprates, Fe-based, and heavy-fermion systems, yet even for the more moderately-correlated TMDCs, their nature and origins have proved highly controversial. Here, we study a prototypical example, $2H$-NbSe$_2$, by spin- and angle-resolved photoemission and first-principles theory. We find that the normal state, from which its hallmark collective phases emerge, is characterised by quasiparticles whose spin is locked to their valley pseudospin. This results from a combination of strong spin-orbit interactions and local inversion symmetry breaking. Non-negligible interlayer coupling further drives a rich three-dimensional momentum-dependence of the underlying Fermi surface spin texture. Together, these findings necessitate a fundamental re-investigation of the nature of charge order and superconducting pairing in NbSe$_2$ and related TMDCs.