Isoelectronic perturbations to f-d-electron hybridization and the enhancement of hidden order in URu2Si2.

Electrical resistivity measurements were performed on single crystals of URu2-x Os x Si2 up to x = 0.28 under hydrostatic pressure up to P = 2 GPa. As the Os concentration, x, is increased, 1) the lattice expands, creating an effective negative chemical pressure Pch(x); 2) the hidden-order (HO) phase is enhanced and the system is driven toward a large-moment antiferromagnetic (LMAFM) phase; and 3) less external pressure Pc is required to induce the HO→LMAFM phase transition. We compare the behavior of the T(x, P) phase boundary reported here for the URu2-x Os x Si2 system with previous reports of enhanced HO in URu2Si2 upon tuning with P or similarly in URu2-x Fe x Si2 upon tuning with positive Pch(x). It is noteworthy that pressure, Fe substitution, and Os substitution are the only known perturbations that enhance the HO phase and induce the first-order transition to the LMAFM phase in URu2Si2 We present a scenario in which the application of pressure or the isoelectronic substitution of Fe and Os ions for Ru results in an increase in the hybridization of the U-5f-electron and transition metal d-electron states which leads to electronic instability in the paramagnetic phase and the concurrent formation of HO (and LMAFM) in URu2Si2 Calculations in the tight-binding approximation are included to determine the strength of hybridization between the U-5f-electron states and the d-electron states of Ru and its isoelectronic Fe and Os substituents in URu2Si2.

Phase diagram and thermal expansion measurements on the system URu2-xFexSi2.

Thermal expansion, electrical resistivity, magnetization, and specific heat measurements were performed on URu2-xFexSi2 single crystals for various values of Fe concentration x in both the hidden-order (HO) and large-moment antiferromagnetic (LMAFM) regions of the phase diagram. Our results show that the paramagnetic (PM) to HO and LMAFM phase transitions are manifested differently in the thermal expansion coefficient. The uniaxial pressure derivatives of the HO/LMAFM transition temperature T0 change dramatically when crossing from the HO to the LMAFM phase. The energy gap also changes consistently when crossing the phase boundary. In addition, for Fe concentrations at xc ≈ 0.1, we observe two features in the thermal expansion upon cooling, one that appears to be associated with the transition from the PM to the HO phase and another one at lower temperature that may be due to the transition from the HO to the LMAFM phase.

Electrical Control of Structural and Physical Properties via Strong Spin-Orbit Interactions in Sr_{2}IrO_{4}.

Electrical control of structural and physical properties is a long-sought, but elusive goal of contemporary science and technology. We demonstrate that a combination of strong spin-orbit interactions (SOI) and a canted antiferromagnetic Mott state is sufficient to attain that goal. The antiferromagnetic insulator Sr_{2}IrO_{4} provides a model system in which strong SOI lock canted Ir magnetic moments to IrO_{6} octahedra, causing them to rigidly rotate together. A novel coupling between an applied electrical current and the canting angle reduces the Néel temperature and drives a large, nonlinear lattice expansion that closely tracks the magnetization, increases the electron mobility, and precipitates a unique resistive switching effect. Our observations open new avenues for understanding fundamental physics driven by strong SOI in condensed matter, and provide a new paradigm for functional materials and devices.

Imaging the three-dimensional Fermi-surface pairing near the hidden-order transition in URu2Si2 using angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy.

We report angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy experiments probing deep into the hidden-order state of URu(2)Si(2), utilizing tunable photon energies with sufficient energy and momentum resolution to detect the near Fermi-surface (FS) behavior. Our results reveal (i) the full itinerancy of the 5f electrons, (ii) the crucial three-dimensional k-space nature of the FS and its critical nesting vectors, in good comparison with density-functional theory calculations, and (iii) the existence of hot-spot lines and pairing of states at the FS, leading to FS gapping in the hidden-order phase.

Quasiparticle dynamics across the full Brillouin zone of Bi2Sr2CaCu2O8+δ traced with ultrafast time and angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy.

A hallmark in the cuprate family of high-temperature superconductors is the nodal-antinodal dichotomy. In this regard, angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) has proven especially powerful, providing band structure information directly in energy-momentum space. Time-resolved ARPES (trARPES) holds great promise of adding ultrafast temporal information, in an attempt to identify different interaction channels in the time domain. Previous studies of the cuprates using trARPES were handicapped by the low probing energy, which significantly limits the accessible momentum space. Using 20.15 eV, 12 fs pulses, we show for the first time the evolution of quasiparticles in the antinodal region of Bi2Sr2CaCu2O8+δ and demonstrate that non-monotonic relaxation dynamics dominates above a certain fluence threshold. The dynamics is heavily influenced by transient modification of the electron-phonon interaction and phase space restrictions, in stark contrast to the monotonic relaxation in the nodal and off-nodal regions.

Quantized breather excitations of Fermi-Pasta-Ulam lattices.

We have calculated the lowest energy quantized breather excitations of both the ß and the α Fermi-Pasta-Ulam monoatomic lattices and the diatomic ß lattice within the ladder approximation. While the classical breather excitations form continua, the quantized breather excitations form a discrete hierarchy labeled by a quantum number n. Although the number of phonons is not conserved, the breather excitations correspond to multiple bound states of phonons. The n=2 breather spectra are composed of resonances in the two-phonon continuum and of discrete branches of infinitely long-lived excitations. The nonlinear attributes of these excitations become more pronounced at elevated temperatures. The calculated n=2 breather and the resonance of the monoatomic ß lattice hybridize and exchange identity at the zone boundary and are in reasonable agreement with the results of previous calculations using the number-conserving approximation. However, by contrast, the breather spectrum of the α monoatomic lattice couples resonantly with the single-phonon spectrum and cannot be calculated within a number-conserving approximation. Furthermore, we show that for sufficiently strong nonlinearity, the α lattice breathers can be observed directly through the single-phonon inelastic neutron-scattering spectrum. As the temperature is increased, the single-phonon dispersion relation for the α lattice becomes progressively softer as the lattice instability is approached. For the diatomic ß lattice, it is found that there are three distinct branches of n=2 breather dispersion relations, which are associated with three distinct two-phonon continua. The two-phonon excitations form three distinct continua: One continuum corresponds to the motion of two independent acoustic phonons, another to the motion of two independent optic phonons, and the last continuum is formed by propagation of two phonons that are one of each character. Each breather dispersion relation is split off the top from of its associated continuum and remains within the forbidden gaps between the continua. The energy splittings from the top of the continua rapidly increase, and the dispersions rapidly decrease with the decreasing energy widths of the associated continua. This finding is in agreement with recent observations of sharp branches of nonlinear vibrational modes in NaI through inelastic neutron-scattering measurements. Furthermore, since the band widths of the various continua successively narrow as the magnitude of their characteristic excitation energies increase, the finding is also in agreement the theoretical prediction that breather excitations in discrete lattices should be localized in the classical limit.

Temperature dependence of hybridization gaps in metallic heavy-fermion systems.

There is evidence that a number of heavy-fermion/mixed-valence materials show hybridization gaps either at the Fermi energy or close to it. In the former case, a heavy-fermion semiconducting state ensues, and in the latter case, the system remains metallic at low temperatures. In either case, there are significant indications that the electronic structure is extremely temperature dependent. In particular, there is evidence from spectroscopic and transport properties that the gap closes at high temperatures and also that the heavy-quasiparticle bands disappear at high temperatures. The magnitudes of the gaps scale with the effective quasiparticle masses. We present a phenomenological model that exhibits a temperature dependence which is consistent with the above behavior. The model is based on a periodic array of Anderson impurities in which the electron correlations are represented by the coupling to bosons with Einstein spectra. The model can be approximately solved in a systematic manner. The solution consists of semi-analytic expressions which represent the temperature dependences of the coherent and incoherent structures in the electronic excitation spectra. We shall compare the hybridization gaps predicted by the theory for the metallic case and those inferred from photoemission experiments on UPd2Al3.