No Arabic abstract
We report a La2CuO4-like interlayer antiferromagnetic order in Sr2IrO4 films with large orthorhombic distortion (> 1.5%). The biaxial lattice strain in epitaxial heterostructures of Sr2IrO4/Ca3Ru2O7 lowers the crystal symmetry of Sr2IrO4 from tetragonal (C4) to orthorhombic (C2), guiding the Ir 5d Jeff = 1/2 pseudospin moment parallel to the elongated b-axis via magnetic anisotropy. From resonant X-ray scattering experiments, we observed an antiferromagnetic order in the orthorhombic Sr2IrO4 film whose interlayer stacking pattern is inverted from that of the tetragonal Sr2IrO4 crystal. This interlayer stacking is similar to that of the orthorhombic La2CuO4, implying that the asymmetric interlayer exchange interaction along a and b-directions exceeds the anisotropic interlayer pseudo-dipolar interaction. Our result suggests that strain-induced distortion can provide a delicate knob for tuning the long-range magnetic order in quasi-two-dimensional systems by evoking the competition between the interlayer exchange coupling and the pseudo-dipolar interaction.
Detailed understanding of the role of single dopant atoms in host materials has been crucial for the continuing miniaturization in the semiconductor industry as local charging and trapping of electrons can completely change the behaviour of a device. Similarly, as dopants can turn a Mott insulator into a high temperature superconductor, their electronic behaviour at the atomic scale is of much interest. Due to limited time resolution of conventional scanning tunnelling microscopes, most atomic scale studies in these systems focussed on the time averaged effect of dopants on the electronic structure. Here, by using atomic scale shot-noise measurements in the doped Mott insulator Bi$_{2}$Sr$_{2}$CaCu$_{2}$O$_{8+x}$, we visualize sub-nanometer sized objects where remarkable dynamics leads to an enhancement of the tunnelling current noise by at least an order of magnitude. From the position, current and energy dependence we argue that these defects are oxygen dopant atoms that were unaccounted for in previous scanning probe studies, whose local environment leads to charge dynamics that strongly affect the tunnelling mechanism. The unconventional behaviour of these dopants opens up the possibility to dynamically control doping at the atomic scale, enabling the direct visualization of the effect of local charging on e.g. high T$_{text{c}}$ superconductivity.
We have carried out Raman spectroscopy experiments to investigate two-magnon excitations in epitaxial thin films of the quasi-two-dimensional antiferromagnetic Mott insulator Sr$_2$IrO$_4$ under in-plane misfit strain. With in-plane biaxial compression, the energy of the two-magnon peak increases, and the peak remains observable over a wider temperature range above the Neel temperature, indicating strain-induced enhancement of the superexchange interactions between $it{J}_{eff}$ = 1/2 pseudospins. From density functional theory calculations, we have found an increase of the nearest-neighbor hopping parameter and exchange interaction with increasing biaxial compressive strain, in agreement with the experimental observations. Our experimental and theoretical results provide perspectives for systematic, theory-guided strain control of the primary exchange interactions in 5$it{d}$ transition metal oxides.
We study the nonequilibrium phase diagram of long-lived photo-doped states in the one-dimensional $U$-$V$ Hubbard model, where $eta$-pairing, spin density wave and charge density wave (CDW) phases are found. The photo-doped states are studied using an effective model obtained by a Schrieffer-Wolff transformation combined with separate chemical potentials for the approximately conserved pseudoparticle excitations, leading to a generalized Gibbs ensemble type description. These photo-doped states are characterized by gapless ($eta$-paring) and gapped (CDW) features in the nonequilibrium spectra. For small $V$, the $eta$-pairing correlations dominate over a wide doping range even when the SU$_c(2)$ symmetry that protects $eta$-pairing in the pure Hubbard model is absent. With increasing $V$, the CDW correlations take over in a wide doping range and are strong relative to the chemically doped case. We attribute the strong CDW correlations to the competition between intra- and inter-species repulsion and the one-dimensional configuration. Our results show that photo-doped strongly correlated systems exhibit different phases than conventional semiconductors.
Magic-angle twisted bilayer graphene has recently become a thriving material platform realizing correlated electron phenomena taking place within its topological flat bands. Several numerical and analytical methods have been applied to understand the correlated phases therein, revealing some similarity with the quantum Hall physics. In this work, we provide a Mott-Hubbard perspective for the TBG system. Employing the large-scale density matrix renormalization group on the lattice model containing the projected Coulomb interactions only, we identify a first-order quantum phase transition between the insulating stripe phase and the quantum anomalous Hall state with the Chern number of $pm 1$. Our results not only shed light on the mechanism of the quantum anomalous Hall state discovered at three-quarters filling, but also provide an example of the topological Mott insulator, i.e., the quantum anomalous Hall state in the strong coupling limit.
We present a computationally efficient method to obtain the spectral function of bulk systems in the framework of steady-state density functional theory (i-DFT) using an idealized Scanning Tunneling Microscope (STM) setup. We calculate the current through the STM tip and then extract the spectral function from the finite-bias differential conductance. The fictitious non-interacting system of i-DFT features an exchange-correlation (xc) contribution to the bias which guarantees the same current as in the true interacting system. Exact properties of the xc bias are established using Fermi-liquid theory and subsequently implemented to construct approximations for the Hubbard model. We show for two different lattice structures that the metal-insulator transition is captured by i-DFT.