No Arabic abstract
We investigate the low-energy collective charge excitations (plasmons, holons) in metallic atomic wires deposited on semiconducting substrates. These systems are described by two-dimensional correlated models representing strongly anisotropic lattices or weakly coupled chains. Well-established theoretical approaches and results are used to study their properties: random phase approximation for anisotropic Fermi liquids and bosonization for coupled Tomonaga-Luttinger liquids as well as Bethe Ansatz and density-matrix renormalization group methods for ladder models. We show that the Fermi and Tomonaga-Luttinger liquid theories predict the same qualitative behavior for the dispersion of excitations at long wave lengths. Moreover, their scaling depends on the choice of the effective electron-electron interaction but does not characterize the dimensionality of the metallic state. Our results also suggest that such anisotropic correlated systems can exhibit two-dimensional dispersions due to the coupling between wires but remain quasi-one-dimensional strongly anisotropic conductors or retain typical features of Tomonaga-Luttinger liquids such as the power-law behaviour of the density of states at the Fermi energy. Thus it is possible that atomic wire materials such as Au/Ge(100) exhibit a mixture of features associated with one and two dimensional metals.
In the first part of our theoretical study of correlated atomic wires on substrates, we introduced lattice models for a one-dimensional quantum wire on a three-dimensional substrate and their approximation by quasi-one-dimensional effective ladder models [arXiv:1704.07350]. In this second part, we apply this approach to the case of a correlated wire with a Hubbard-type electron-electron repulsion deposited on an insulating substrate. The ground-state and spectral properties are investigated numerically using the density-matrix renormalization group method and quantum Monte Carlo simulations. As a function of the model parameters, we observe various phases with quasi-one-dimensional low-energy excitations localized in the wire, namely paramagnetic Mott insulators, Luttinger liquids, and spin-$1/2$ Heisenberg chains. The validity of the effective ladder models is assessed by studying the convergence with the number of legs and comparing to the full three-dimensional model. We find that narrow ladder models accurately reproduce the quasi-one-dimensional excitations of the full three-dimensional model but predict only qualitatively whether excitations are localized around the wire or delocalized in the three-dimensional substrate.
We present a theoretical study of correlated atomic wires deposited on substrates in two parts. In this first part, we propose lattice models for a one-dimensional quantum wire on a three-dimensional substrate and map them onto effective two-dimensional lattices using the Lanczos algorithm. We then discuss the approximation of these two-dimensional lattices by narrow ladder models that can be investigated with well-established methods for one-dimensional correlated quantum systems, such as the density-matrix renormalization group or bosonization. The validity of this approach is studied first for noninteracting electrons and then for a correlated wire with a Hubbard electron-electron repulsion using quantum Monte Carlo simulations. While narrow ladders cannot be used to represent wires on metallic substrates, they capture the physics of wires on insulating substrates if at least three legs are used. In the second part [arXiv:1704.07359], we use this approach for a detailed numerical investigation of a wire with a Hubbard-type interaction on an insulating substrate.
The crystal structure of layered metal IrTe2 is determined using single-crystal x-ray diffraction. At T=220 K, it exhibits Ir and Te dimers forming a valence-bond crystal. Electronic structure calculations reveal an intriguing quasi-two-dimensional electronic state, with planes of reduced density of states cutting diagonally through the Ir and Te layers. These planes are formed by the Ir and Te dimers, which exhibit a signature of covalent bonding character development. Evidence for significant charge disproportionation among the dimerized and non-dimerized Ir (charge order) is also presented.
The competition between collective quantum phases in materials with strongly correlated electrons depends sensitively on the dimensionality of the electron system, which is difficult to control by standard solid-state chemistry. We have fabricated superlattices of the paramagnetic metal LaNiO3 and the wide-gap insulator LaAlO3 with atomically precise layer sequences. Using optical ellipsometry and low-energy muon spin rotation, superlattices with LaNiO3 as thin as two unit cells are shown to undergo a sequence of collective metalinsulator and antiferromagnetic transitions as a function of decreasing temperature, whereas samples with thicker LaNiO3 layers remain metallic and paramagnetic at all temperatures. Metal-oxide superlattices thus allow control of the dimensionality and collective phase behavior of correlated-electron systems.
Linear atomic chains containing a single Kondo atom, Co, and several nonmagnetic atoms, Cu, were assembled atom by atom on Cu(111) with the tip of a scanning tunneling microscope. The resulting one-dimensional wires, Cu$_m$CoCu$_n$ ($0leq m, nleq 5$), exhibit a rich evolution of the single-Co Kondo effect with the variation of $m$ and $n$, as inferred from changes in the line shape of the Abrikosov-Suhl-Kondo resonance. The most striking result is the quenching of the resonance in CuCoCu$_2$ and Cu$_2$CoCu$_2$ clusters. State-of-the-art first-principles calculations were performed to unravel possible microscopic origins of the remarkable experimental observations.