No Arabic abstract
Nuclear magnetism in n-doped semiconductors with positive hyperfine constant is revisited. Two kinds of nuclear magnetic ordering can be induced by resident electrons in a deeply cooled nuclear spin system. At positive nuclear spin temperature below a critical value, randomly oriented nuclear spin polarons similar to that predicted by I. Merkulov [I. Merkulov, Physics of the Solid State 40, 930 (1998)] should emerge. These polarons are oriented randomly and within each polaron nuclear and electron spins are aligned antiferromagnetically. At negative nuclear spin temperature below a critical value we predict another type of magnetic ordering - dynamically induced nuclear ferromagnet. This is a long-range ferromagnetically ordered state involving both electrons and nuclei. It can form if electron spin relaxation is dominated by the hyperfine coupling, rather than by the spin-orbit interaction. Application of the theory to the n-doped GaAs suggests that the ferromagnetic order may be reached at experimentally achievable nuclear spin temperature $Theta_N approx 0.5$ $mu$K and lattice temperature $T_L approx 5$ K.
We use field-cycling-assisted dynamic nuclear polarization and continuous radio-frequency (RF) driving over a broad spectral range to demonstrate magnetic-field-dependent activation of nuclear spin transport from strongly-hyperfine-coupled 13C sites in diamond. We interpret our observations with the help of a theoretical framework where nuclear spin interactions are mediated by electron spins. In particular, we build on the results from a 4-spin toy model to show how otherwise localized nuclear spins must thermalize as they are brought in contact with a larger ancilla spin network. Further, by probing the system response to a variable driving field amplitude, we witness stark changes in the RF-absorption spectrum, which we interpret as partly due to contributions from heterogeneous multi-spin sets, whose zero-quantum transitions become RF active thanks to the hybrid electron-nuclear nature of the system. These findings could prove relevant in applications to dynamic nuclear polarization, spin-based quantum information processing, and nanoscale sensing.
Magnetism in two-dimensional materials is not only of fundamental scientific interest but also a promising candidate for numerous applications. However, studies so far, especially the experimental ones, have been mostly limited to the magnetism arising from defects, vacancies, edges or chemical dopants which are all extrinsic effects. Here, we report on the observation of intrinsic antiferromagnetic ordering in the two-dimensional limit. By monitoring the Raman peaks that arise from zone folding due to antiferromagnetic ordering at the transition temperature, we demonstrate that FePS3 exhibits an Ising-type antiferromagnetic ordering down to the monolayer limit, in good agreement with the Onsager solution for two-dimensional order-disorder transition. The transition temperature remains almost independent of the thickness from bulk to the monolayer limit with TN ~118 K, indicating that the weak interlayer interaction has little effect on the antiferromagnetic ordering.
How a certain ground state of complex physical systems emerges, especially in two-dimensional materials, is a fundamental question in condensed-matter physics. A particularly interesting case is systems belonging to the class of XY Hamiltonian where the magnetic order parameter of conventional nature is unstable in two-dimensional materials leading to a Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless transition. Here, we report how the XXZ-type antiferromagnetic order of a magnetic van der Waals material, NiPS3, behaves upon reducing the thickness and ultimately becomes unstable in the monolayer limit. Our experimental data are consistent with the findings based on renormalization group theory that at low temperatures a two-dimensional XXZ system behaves like a two-dimensional XY one, which cannot have a long-range order at finite temperatures. This work provides experimental examination of the XY magnetism in the atomically thin limit and opens new opportunities of exploiting these fundamental theorems of magnetism using magnetic van der Waals materials.
Magnetically doped semiconductors are well known for their giant Zeeman splittings which can reach several meV even in relatively small external magnetic fields. After preparing a nonequilibrium exciton distribution via optical excitation, the spin dynamics in diluted magnetic semiconductor quantum wells is typically governed by spin-flip scattering processes due to the exciton-impurity exchange interaction. Our theoretical calculations show that the giant Zeeman splitting in these materials in combination with the influence of longitudinal acoustic phonons lead to a quantum ratchet-type dynamics, resulting in an almost complete reversal of the carrier spin polarization at very low temperatures. Furthermore, we find that the predictions of a much simpler rate-equation approach qualitatively agree with a more advanced and numerically demanding quantum kinetic description of the spin dynamics for a wide range of temperatures, although quantitative difference are noticeable.
The main obstacle to coherent control of two-level quantum systems is their coupling to an uncontrolled environment. For electron spins in III-V quantum dots, the random environment is mostly given by the nuclear spins in the quantum dot host material; they collectively act on the electron spin through the hyperfine interaction, much like a random magnetic field. Here we show that the same hyperfine interaction can be harnessed such that partial control of the normally uncontrolled environment becomes possible. In particular, we observe that the electron spin resonance frequency remains locked to the frequency of an applied microwave magnetic field, even when the external magnetic field or the excitation frequency are changed. The nuclear field thereby adjusts itself such that the electron spin resonance condition remains satisfied. General theoretical arguments indicate that this spin resonance locking is accompanied by a significant reduction of the randomness in the nuclear field.