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Now showing 1 - 5 of 5
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    Chirality flip of Weyl nodes and its manifestation in strained MoTe2
    (College Park, MD : APS, 2021) Könye, Viktor; Bouhon, Adrien; Fulga, Ion Cosma; Slager, Robert-Jan; van den Brink, Jeroen; Facio, Jorge I.
    Due to their topological charge, or chirality, the Weyl cones present in topological semimetals are considered robust against arbitrary perturbations. One well-understood exception to this robustness is the pairwise creation or annihilation of Weyl cones, which involves the overlap of two oppositely charged nodes in energy and momentum. Here we show that their topological charge can in fact change sign, in a process that involves the merging of not two, but three Weyl nodes. This is facilitated by the presence of rotation and time-reversal symmetries, which constrain the relative positions of Weyl cones in momentum space. We analyze the chirality flip process, showing that transport properties distinguish it from the conventional, double Weyl merging. Moreover, we predict that the chirality flip occurs in MoTe$_2$, where experimentally accessible strain leads to the merging of three Weyl cones close to the Fermi level. Our work sets the stage to further investigate and observe such chirality flipping processes in different topological materials.
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    Multistate current-induced magnetization switching in Au/Fe/MgO(001) epitaxial heterostructures
    (College Park, MD : APS, 2021) Gospodarič, P.; Młyńczak, E.; Soldatov, I.; Kákay, A.; Bürgler, D.E.; Plucinski, L.; Schäfer, R.; Fassbender, J.; Schneider, C.M.
    Magnetization switching using in-plane charge current recently has been widely investigated in heavy metal/ferromagnet bilayers with the switching mechanism usually attributed to the action of the spin-orbit coupling. Here we study in-plane current induced magnetization switching in model epitaxial bilayers that consist of Au(001) and Fe(001) grown on MgO(001). We use the planar Hall effect combined with magnetooptical Kerr effect (MOKE) microscopy to investigate magnetic properties of the bilayers and current-induced switching. We show that a current density beyond 1.4×107 A/cm can be employed for reproducible electrical switching of the magnetization between multiple stable states that correspond to different arrangements of magnetic domains with magnetization direction along one of the in-plane easy magnetization axes of the Fe(001) film. Lower current densities result in stable intermediate transversal resistances which are interpreted based on MOKE-microscopy investigations as resulting from the current-induced magnetic domain structure that is formed in the area of the Hall cross. We find that the physical mechanism of the current-induced magnetization switching of the Au/Fe/MgO(001) system at room temperature can be fully explained by the Oersted field, which is generated by the charge current flowing mostly through the Au layer.
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    Evidence for a percolative Mott insulator-metal transition in doped Sr2IrO4
    (College Park, MD : APS, 2021) Sun, Zhixiang; Guevara, Jose M.; Sykora, Steffen; Pärschke, Ekaterina M.; Manna, Kaustuv; Maljuk, Andrey; Wurmehl, Sabine; van den Brink, Jeroen; Büchner, Bernd; Hess, Christian
    Despite many efforts to rationalize the strongly correlated electronic ground states in doped Mott insulators, the nature of the doping-induced insulator-to-metal transition is still a subject under intensive investigation. Here, we probe the nanoscale electronic structure of the Mott insulator Sr2IrO4−δ with low-temperature scanning tunneling microscopy and find an enhanced local density of states (LDOS) inside the Mott gap at the location of individual defects which we interpret as defects at apical oxygen sites. A chiral behavior in the topography for those defects has been observed. We also visualize the local enhanced conductance arising from the overlapping of defect states which induces finite LDOS inside of the Mott gap. By combining these findings with the typical spatial extension of isolated defects of about 2 nm, our results indicate that the insulator-to-metal transition in Sr2IrO4−δ could be percolative in nature.
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    Unusual spin pseudogap behavior in the spin web lattice Cu3TeO6 probed by 125Te nuclear magnetic resonance
    (College Park, MD : APS, 2021) Baek, Seung-Ho; Yeo, Hyeon Woo; Park, Jena; Choi, Kwang-Yong; Büchner, Bernd
    We present a 125Te nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) study in the three-dimensional spin web lattice Cu3TeO6 which harbors topological magnons. The 125Te NMR spectra and the Knight-shift K as a function of temperature show a drastic change at TS∼40K much lower than the Néel ordering temperature TN∼61K, providing evidence for the first-order structural phase transition within the magnetically ordered state. Most remarkably, the temperature dependence of the spin-lattice relaxation rate T−11 unravels spin-gap-like magnetic excitations, which sharply sets in at T∗∼75K, the temperature well above TN. The spin-gap behavior may be understood by weakly dispersive optical magnon branches of high-energy spin excitations originating from the unique corner-sharing Cu hexagon spin-1/2 network with low coordination number.
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    Finite temperature fluctuation-induced order and responses in magnetic topological insulators
    (College Park, MD : APS, 2021) Scholten, Marius; Facio, Jorge I.; Ray, Rajyavardhan; Eremin, Ilya M.; van den Brink, Jeroen; Nogueira, Flavio S.
    We derive an effective field theory model for magnetic topological insulators and predict that a magnetic electronic gap persists on the surface for temperatures above the ordering temperature of the bulk. Our analysis also applies to interfaces of heterostructures consisting of a ferromagnetic and a topological insulator. In order to make quantitative predictions for MnBi2Te4 and for EuS-Bi2Se3 heterostructures, we combine the effective field theory method with density functional theory and Monte Carlo simulations. For MnBi2Te4 we predict an upwards Néel temperature shift at the surface up to 15%, while the EuS-Bi2Se3 interface exhibits a smaller relative shift. The effective theory also predicts induced Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interactions and a topological magnetoelectric effect, both of which feature a finite temperature and chemical potential dependence.