No Arabic abstract
The electrodynamic response of the spin-ladder compound Sr$_{14-x}$Ca$_x$Cu$_{24}$O$_{41}$ ($x=0, 3, 9$) has been studied from radiofrequencies up to the infrared. At temperatures below 250 K a pronounced absorption peak appears around 12 cm$^{-1}$ in Sr$_{14}$Cu$_{24}$O$_{41}$ for the radiation polarized along the chains/ladders (${bf E}parallel {bf c}$). In addition a strongly temperature dependent dielectric relaxation is observed in the kHz - MHz range. We explain this behavior by a charge density wave which develops in the ladders sub-system and produces a mode pinned at 12 cm$^{-1}$. With increasing Ca doping the mode shifts up in frequency and eventually disappears for $x=9$ because the dimensionality of the system crosses over from one to two dimensions, giving way to the superconducting ground state under pressure.
Structural properties of the spin chain and ladder compound Sr$_{14}$Cu$_{24}$O$_{41}$ have been studied using diffraction with hard x-rays. Strong incommensurate modulation reflections are observed due to the lattice mismatch of the chain and ladder structure, respectively. While modulation reflections of low orders display only a weak temperature independence, higher orders dramatically increase in intensity when cooling the sample to 10 K. All observed modulation reflections are indexed within the super space group symmetry and no structural phase transition could be identified between 10 K and room temperature. We argue that these modulation reflections are not caused by a five-fold periodicity of the chain lattice, as claimed by Fukuda et al. Phys. Rev. B 66, 012104 (2002), but that holes localize in the potential given by the lattice modulation, which in turn gives rise to a further deformation of the lattice.
We report an electron spin resonance (ESR) study of single crystals of the spin-chain spin-ladder compound (Sr,La,Ca)_{14}Cu_{24}O_{41}. The data suggest that in intrinsically hole doped Sr_{14-x}Ca_xCu_{24}O_{41} only a small amount of holes is transferred from the chains to the ladders with increasing x, resulting in a crossover from spin dimerized to uniform spin chains. In the samples of La_{14-x}Ca_xCu_{24}O_{41} with reduced hole content a very broad signal is observed in the paramagnetic state, indicative of a surprisingly strong anisotropy of the nearest neighbor exchange in the chains.
Transport and 63^Cu-NMR, Knight shift and T_1, measurements performed on the two-leg spin ladders of Sr_2Ca_{12}Cu_{24}O_{41} single crystals show a collapse of the gap in ladder spin excitations when superconductivity is stabilised under a pressure of 29 kbar. These results support the prediction made with exact diagonalisation techniques in two-leg isotropic t-J ladders of a transition between a low-doping spin gap phase and a gapless 1-D Tomonaga-Luttinger regime.
When two quantum systems are coupled via a mediator, their dynamics has traces of non-classical properties of the mediator. We show how this observation can be effectively utilised to study the quantum nature of materials without well-established structure. A concrete example considered is Sr$_{14}$Cu$_{24}$O$_{41}$. Measurements of low temperature magnetic and thermal properties of this compound were explained with long-range coupling of unpaired spins through dimerised spin chains. We first show that the required coupling is not provided by the spin chain alone and give alternative compact two-dimensional spin structures compatible with the experimental results. Then we argue that any mediator between the unpaired spins must share with them quantum correlations in the form of quantum discord and in many cases quantum entanglement. In conclusion, present data witnesses quantum mediators between unpaired spins in Sr$_{14}$Cu$_{24}$O$_{41}$.
Charge and spin density waves, periodic modulations of the electron and magnetization densities, respectively, are among the most abundant and non-trivial low-temperature ordered phases in condensed matter. The ordering direction is widely believed to result from the Fermi surface topology. However, several recent studies indicate that this common view needs to be supplemented. Here, we show how an enhanced electron-lattice interaction can contribute to or even determine the selection of the ordering vector in the model charge density wave system ErTe3. Our joint experimental and theoretical study allows us to establish a relation between the selection rules of the electronic light scattering spectra and the enhanced electron-phonon coupling in the vicinity of band degeneracy points. This alternative proposal for charge density wave formation may be of general relevance for driving phase transitions into other broken-symmetry ground states, particularly in multiband systems such as the iron based superconductors.