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Linear and nonlinear optical probe of the ferroelectric-like phase transition in a polar metal, LiOsO3

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 نشر من قبل Haricharan Padmanabhan
 تاريخ النشر 2018
  مجال البحث فيزياء
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LiOsO3 is one of the first materials identified in a recent literature as a polar metal, a class of materials that are simultaneously noncentrosymmetric and metallic. In this work, the linear and nonlinear optical susceptibility of LiOsO3 is studied by means of ellipsometry and optical second harmonic generation (SHG). Strong optical birefringence is observed using spectroscopic ellipsometry. The nonlinear optical susceptibility extracted from SHG polarimetry reveals that the tensor components are of the same magnitude as in isostructural insulator LiNbO3, except the component along the polar axis d33, which is suppressed by an order of magnitude. Temperature-dependent SHG measurements in combination with Raman spectroscopy indicate a continuous order-disorder type polar phase transition at 140 K. Linear and nonlinear optical microscopy techniques reveal 109 deg/71 deg ferroelastic domain walls, like in other trigonal ferroelectrics. No 180 deg polar domain walls are observed to emerge across the phase transition.



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The octahedral tilting and ferroelectric-like structural transition of LiOsO3 metallic perovskite [Nature Materials 12, 1024 (2013)] was examined using first-principles density-functional theory. In LiOsO3, a-a-a- octahedral titling mode is responsib le for the cubic to rhombohedral structural transition, which is stable phase at room temperature. At low temperatures, a non-centrosymmetric transition to a rhombohedra phase was realized due to zone center phonon softening. The phase transition behavior of LiOsO3 can be explained fully by density functional calculations and phonon calculations. The electronic structure and Fermi surface changes due to the electron lattice coupling effect are also presented. The carrier density of state across the phase transition is associated with the resistivity, heat capacity, and susceptibility.
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