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Register a new userAnomalous Dirac Plasmons in 1D Topological Electrides
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Plasmon opens up the possibility to efficiently couple light and matter at sub-wavelength scales. In general, the plasmon frequency is dependent of carrier density. This dependency, however, renders fundamentally a weak plasmon intensity at low frequency, especially for Dirac plasmon (DP) widely studied in graphene. Here we demonstrate a new type of DP, excited by a Dirac nodal-surface state, which exhibits an anomalously density-independent frequency. Remarkably, we predict realization of anomalous DP (ADP) in 1D topological electrides, such as Ba3CrN3 and Sr3CrN3, by first-principles calculations. The ADPs in both systems have a density-independent frequency and high intensity, and their frequency can be tuned from terahertz to mid-infrared by changing the excitation direction. Furthermore, the intrinsic weak electron-phonon coupling of anionic electrons in electrides affords an added advantage of ultra-low phonon-assisted damping and hence a long lifetime of the ADPs. Our work paves the way to developing novel plasmonic and optoelectronic devices by combining topological physics with electride materials.
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We investigate in a fully quantum-mechanical manner how the many-body excitation spectrum of topological insulators is affected by the presence of long-range Coulomb interactions. In the one-dimensional Su-Schrieffer-Heeger model and its mirror-symmetric variant strongly localized plasmonic excitations are observed which originate from topologically non-trivial single-particle states. These textit{topological plasmons} inherit some of the characteristics of their constituent topological single-particle states, but they are not equally well protected against disorder due to the admixture of non-topological bulk single-particle states in the polarization function. The strength of the effective Coulomb interactions is also shown to have strong effects on the plasmonic modes. Furthermore, we show how external modifications via dielectric screening and applied electric fields with distinct symmetries can be used to study topological plasmons, thus allowing for experimental verification of our atomistic predictions.
Electrides are an emerging class of materials with excess electrons localized in interstices and acting as anionic interstitial quasi-atoms (ISQs). The spatial ion-electron separation means that electrides can be treated physically as ionic crystals, and this unusual behavior leads to extraordinary physical and chemical phenomena. Here, a completely different effect in electrides is predicted. By recognizing the long-range Coulomb interactions between matrix atoms and ISQs that are unique in electrides, a nonanalytic correction to the forces exerted on matrix atoms is proposed. This correction gives rise to an LA-TA splitting in the acoustic branch of lattice phonons near the zone center, similar to the well-known LO-TO splitting in the phonon spectra of ionic compounds. The factors that govern this splitting are investigated, with isotropic fcc-Li and anisotropic hP4-Na as the typical examples. It is found that not all electrides can induce a detectable splitting, and criteria are given for this type of splitting. The present prediction unveils the rich phenomena in electrides and could lead to unprecedented applications.
Topological materials bear gapped excitations in bulk yet protected gapless excitations at boundaries. Magnetoplasmons (MPs), as high-frequency density excitations of two-dimensional electron gas (2DEG) in a perpendicular magnetic field, embody a prototype of band topology for bosons. The time-reversal-breaking magnetic field opens a topological gap for bulk MPs up to the cyclotron frequency; topologically-protected edge magnetoplasmons (EMPs) bridge the bulk gap and propagate unidirectionally along systems boundaries. However, all the EMPs known to date adhere to physical edges where the electron density terminates abruptly. This restriction has made device application extremely difficult. Here we demonstrate a new class of topological edge plasmons -- domain-boundary magnetoplasmons (DBMPs), within a uniform edgeless 2DEG. Such DBMPs arise at the domain boundaries of an engineered sign-changing magnetic field and are protected by the difference of gap Chern numbers (+/-1) across the magnetic domains. They propagate unidirectionally along the domain boundaries and are immune to domain defects. Moreover, they exhibit wide tunability in the microwave frequency range under an applied magnetic field or gate voltage. Our study opens a new direction to realize high-speed reconfigurable topological devices.
The unoccupied states in topological insulators Bi_2Se_3, PbSb_2Te_4, and Pb_2Bi_2Te_2S_3 are studied by the density functional theory methods. It is shown that a surface state with linear dispersion emerges in the inverted conduction band energy gap at the center of the surface Brillouin zone on the (0001) surface of these insulators. The alternative expression of Z_2 invariant allowed us to show that a necessary condition for the existence of the second Gamma Dirac cone is the presence of local gaps at the time reversal invariant momentum points of the bulk spectrum and change of parity in one of these points.
The recently developed theory of topological quantum chemistry (TQC) has built a close connection between band representations in momentum space and orbital characters in real space. It provides an effective way to diagnose topological materials, leading to the discovery of lots of topological materials after the screening of all known nonmagnetic compounds. On the other hand, it can also efficiently reveal spacial orbital characters, including average charge centers and site-symmetry characters. By using TQC theory with the computed irreducible representations in the first-principles calculations, we demonstrate that the electrides with excess electrons serving as anions at vacancies can be well identified by analyzing band representations (BRs), which cannot be expressed as a sum of atomic-orbital-induced band representations (aBRs). In fact, the floating bands (formed by the excess electrons) belong to the BRs induced from the pseudo-orbitals centered at vacancies. In other words, the electrides are proved to be unconventional ionic crystals, where a set of occupied bands is not a sum of aBRs but necessarily contains a BR from vacancies. The TQC theory provides a promising avenue to pursue more electride candidates in ionic crystals.
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