No Arabic abstract
We present a comprehensive study of the magnetic exchange Hamiltonian of elemental Gadolinium. We use neutron scattering to measure the magnon spectrum over the entire Brillouin zone, and fit the excitations to a spin wave model to extract the first 30 nearest neighbor magnetic exchange interactions with rigorously defined uncertainty. We find these exchange interactions to follow RKKY behavior, oscillating from ferromagnetic to antiferromagnetic as a function of distance. Finally, we discuss the topological features and degeneracies in Gd, and HCP ferromagnets in general. We show theoretically how, with asymmetric exchange, topological properties could be tuned with a magnetic field.
We report the identification of symmetry-enforced nodal planes (NPs) in CoSi providing the missing topological charges in an entire network of band-crossings comprising in addition multifold degeneracies and Weyl points, such that the fermion doubling theorem is satisfied. In our study we have combined measurements of Shubnikov-de Haas (SdH) oscillations in CoSi with material-specific calculations of the electronic structure and Berry curvature, as well as a general analysis of the band topology of space group (SG) 198. The observation of two nearly dispersionless SdH frequency branches provides unambiguous evidence of four Fermi surface sheets at the R point that reflect the symmetry-enforced orthogonality of the underlying wave functions at the intersections with the NPs. Hence, irrespective of the spin-orbit coupling strength, SG198 features always six- and fourfold degenerate crossings at R and $Gamma$ that are intimately connected to the topological charges distributed across the network.
We investigate the magnetic excitations of elemental gadolinium (Gd) using inelastic neutron scattering, showing that Gd is a Dirac magnon material with nodal lines at $K$ and nodal planes at half integer $ell$. We find an anisotropic intensity winding around the $K$-point Dirac magnon cone, which is interpreted to indicate Berry phase physics. Using linear spin wave theory calculations, we show the nodal lines have non-trivial Berry phases, and topological surface modes. Together, these results indicate a highly nontrivial topology, which is generic to hexagonal close packed ferromagnets. We discuss potential implications for other such systems.
High quality thin films of the ferromagnetic semiconductor EuO have been prepared and were studied using a new form of spin-resolved spectroscopy. We observed large changes in the electronic structure across the Curie and metal-insulator transition temperature. We found that these are caused by the exchange splitting of the conduction band in the ferromagnetic state, which is as large as 0.6 eV. We also present strong evidence that the bottom of the conduction band consists mainly of majority spins. This implies that doped charge carriers in EuO are practically fully spin polarized.
The sudden decrease in molar volume exhibited by most lanthanides under high pressure is often attributed to changes in the degree of localization of their 4f-electrons. We give evidence, based on electrical resistivity measurements of dilute Y(Gd) and Y(Tb) alloys to 120 GPa, that the volume collapse transitions in Gd and Tb metals have different origins, despite their being neighbors in the periodic table. Remarkably, the change under pressure in the magnetic state of isolated Pr or Tb impurity ions in the nonmagnetic Y host appears to closely mirror corresponding changes in pure Pr or Tb metals. The collapse in Tb appears to be driven by an enhanced negative exchange interaction between 4f and conduction electrons under pressure (Kondo resonance) which, in the case of Y(Tb), dramatically alters the superconducting properties of the Y host, much like previously found for Y(Pr). In Gd our resistivity measurements suggest that a Kondo resonance is not the main driver for its volume collapse. X-ray absorption and emission spectroscopies clearly show that 4f local moments remain largely intact across both volume collapse transitions ruling out 4f band formation (delocalization) and valence transition models as possible drivers. The results highlight the richness of behavior behind the volume collapse transition in lanthanides and demonstrate the stability of the 4f level against band formation to extreme pressure.
We report the first observation of Rabi oscillations in the spin-7/2 ensemble of trivalent gadolinium ions hosted in CaWO$_4$ single crystal. A number of transitions within the lowest electronic multiplet $^8S_{7/2}$ of Gd$^{3+}$ ion are studied using a combination of continuous-wave and pulsed electron paramagnetic resonance spectroscopy. The corresponding Rabi damping curves and the spin coherence times are detected at varying strengths of the microwave field. These data are well reproduced by a theoretical model which accounts for the intrinsic inhomogeneity of the microwave field within the microwave resonator and the magnetic dipole interactions in the diluted spin ensemble. The results indicate that the studied 8-level ground manifold of Gd$^{3+}$ ion can represent an effective three qubit quantum system.