No Arabic abstract
We report the thermoelectric transport properties in the orbital-ordered Mott insulating phase of Ca$_2$RuO$_4$ close to and far from equilibrium. Near equilibrium conditions where the temperature gradient is only applied to the sample, an insulating but non-monotonic temperature variation of the Seebeck coefficient is observed, which is accounted for in terms of a temperature-induced suppression of the orbital order. In non-equilibrium conditions where we have applied high electrical currents, we find that the Seebeck coefficient is anomalously increased in magnitude with increasing external current. The present result clearly demonstrates a non-thermal effect since the heating simply causes a decrease of the Seebeck coefficient, implying a non-trivial non-equilibrium effect such as a modification of the spin and orbital state in currents.
A sizable transverse thermoelectric coefficient N , large to the extent that it potentially serves applications, is predicted to arise, by means of first-principles calculations, in a Skyrmion crystal assumed on EuO monolayer where carrier electrons are introduced upon a quantum anomalous Hall insulating phase of Chern number C = 2. This encourages future experiments to pursue such an effect.
Synchrotron X-ray diffraction patterns were measured and analyzed for a polycrystalline sample of the room-temperature ferromagnet Sr3.12Er0.88Co4O10.5 from 300 to 650 K, from which two structural phase transitions were found to occur successively. The higher-temperature transition at 509 K is driven by ordering of the oxygen vacancies, which is closely related to the metallic state at high temperatures. The lower-temperature transition at 360 K is of first order, at which the ferromagnetic state suddenly appears with exhibiting a jump in magnetization and resistivity. Based on the refined structure, possible spin and orbital models for the magnetic order are proposed.
Manipulating the orbital occupation of valence electrons via epitaxial strain in an effort to induce new functional properties requires considerations of how changes in the local bonding environment affect the band structure at the Fermi level. Using synchrotron radiation to measure the x-ray linear dichroism of epitaxially strained films of the correlated oxide CaFeO3, we demonstrate that the orbital polarization of the Fe valence electrons is opposite from conventional understanding. Although the energetic ordering of the Fe 3d orbitals is confirmed by multiplet ligand field theory analysis to be consistent with previously reported strain-induced behavior, we find that the nominally higher energy orbital is more populated than the lower. We ascribe this inverted orbital polarization to an anisotropic bandwidth response to strain in a compound with nearly filled bands. These findings provide an important counterexample to the traditional understanding of strain-induced orbital polarization and reveal a new method to engineer otherwise unachievable orbital occupations in correlated oxides.
Conventionally ordered magnets possess bosonic elementary excitations, called magnons. By contrast, no magnetic insulators in more than one dimension are known whose excitations are not bosons but fermions. Theoretically, some quantum spin liquids (QSLs) -- new topological phases which can occur when quantum fluctuations preclude an ordered state -- are known to exhibit Majorana fermions as quasiparticles arising from fractionalization of spins. Alas, despite much searching, their experimental observation remains elusive. Here, we show that fermionic excitations are remarkably directly evident in experimental Raman scattering data across a broad energy and temperature range in the two-dimensional material $alpha$-RuCl$_3$. This shows the importance of magnetic materials as hosts of Majorana fermions. In turn, this first systematic evaluation of the dynamics of a QSL at finite temperature emphasizes the role of excited states for detecting such exotic properties associated with otherwise hard-to-identify topological QSLs.
The interface between the insulators LaAlO$_3$ and SrTiO$_3$ accommodates a two-dimensional electron liquid (2DEL) -- a high mobility electron system exhibiting superconductivity as well as indications of magnetism and correlations. While this flagship oxide heterostructure shows promise for electronics applications, the origin and microscopic properties of the 2DEL remain unclear. The uncertainty remains in part because the electronic structures of such nanoscale buried interfaces are difficult to probe, and is compounded by the variable presence of oxygen vacancies and coexistence of both localized and delocalized charges. These various complications have precluded decisive tests of intrinsic electronic and orbital reconstruction at this interface. Here we overcome prior difficulties by developing an interface analysis based on the inherently interface-sensitive resonant x-ray reflectometry. We discover a high charge density of 0.5 electrons per interfacial unit cell for samples above the critical LaAlO$_3$ thickness, and extract the depth dependence of both the orbital and electronic reconstructions near the buried interface. We find that the majority of the reconstruction phenomena are confined to within 2 unit cells of the interface, and we quantify how oxygen vacancies significantly affect the electronic system. Our results provide strong support for the existence of polarity induced electronic reconstruction, clearly separating its effects from those of oxygen vacancies.