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Now showing 1 - 10 of 16
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    Nesting-driven multipolar order in CeB6 from photoemission tomography
    (London : Nature Publishing Group, 2016) Koitzsch, A.; Heming, N.; Knupfer, M.; Büchner, B.; Portnichenko, P.Y.; Dukhnenko, A.V.; Shitsevalova, N.Y.; Filipov, V.B.; Lev, L.L.
    Some heavy fermion materials show so-called hidden-order phases which are invisible to many characterization techniques and whose microscopic origin remained controversial for decades. Among such hidden-order compounds, CeB6 is of model character due to its simple electronic configuration and crystal structure. Apart from more conventional antiferromagnetism, it shows an elusive phase at low temperatures, which is commonly associated with multipolar order. Here we show that this phase roots in a Fermi surface instability. This conclusion is based on a full 3D tomographic sampling of the electronic structure by angle-resolved photoemission and comparison with inelastic neutron scattering data. The hidden order is mediated by itinerant electrons. Our measurements will serve as a paradigm for the investigation of hidden-order phases in f-electron systems, but also generally for situations where the itinerant electrons drive orbital or spin order.
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    Weak-coupling superconductivity in a strongly correlated iron pnictide
    (London : Nature Publishing Group, 2016) Charnukha, A.; Post, K.W.; Thirupathaiah, S.; Pröpper, D.; Wurmehl, S.; Roslova, M.; Morozov, I.; Büchner, B.; Yaresko, A.N.
    Iron-based superconductors have been found to exhibit an intimate interplay of orbital, spin, and lattice degrees of freedom, dramatically affecting their low-energy electronic properties, including superconductivity. Albeit the precise pairing mechanism remains unidentified, several candidate interactions have been suggested to mediate the superconducting pairing, both in the orbital and in the spin channel. Here, we employ optical spectroscopy (OS), angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES), ab initio band-structure, and Eliashberg calculations to show that nearly optimally doped NaFe0.978Co0.022As exhibits some of the strongest orbitally selective electronic correlations in the family of iron pnictides. Unexpectedly, we find that the mass enhancement of itinerant charge carriers in the strongly correlated band is dramatically reduced near the Γ point and attribute this effect to orbital mixing induced by pronounced spin-orbit coupling. Embracing the true band structure allows us to describe all low-energy electronic properties obtained in our experiments with remarkable consistency and demonstrate that superconductivity in this material is rather weak and mediated by spin fluctuations.
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    Effect of nematic ordering on electronic structure of FeSe
    (London : Nature Publishing Group, 2016) Fedorov, A.; Yaresko, A.; Kim, T.K.; Kushnirenko, Y.; Haubold, E.; Wolf, T.; Hoesch, M.; Grüneis, A.; Büchner, B.; Borisenko, S.V.
    Electronically driven nematic order is often considered as an essential ingredient of high-temperature superconductivity. Its elusive nature in iron-based superconductors resulted in a controversy not only as regards its origin but also as to the degree of its influence on the electronic structure even in the simplest representative material FeSe. Here we utilized angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy and density functional theory calculations to study the influence of the nematic order on the electronic structure of FeSe and determine its exact energy and momentum scales. Our results strongly suggest that the nematicity in FeSe is electronically driven, we resolve the recent controversy and provide the necessary quantitative experimental basis for a successful theory of superconductivity in iron-based materials which takes into account both, spin-orbit interaction and electronic nematicity.
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    All-on-Chip Concurrent Measurements of the Static Magnetization and of the Electron Spin Resonance with Microcantilevers
    (Wien [u.a.] : Springer, 2021) Alfonsov, A.; Büchner, B.; Kataev, V.
    A large variety of the samples of novel magnetic materials, which are of high interest due to their exotic properties, are only available in very small sizes. In some cases, it is not possible to synthesize large single crystals; in other cases, the small size itself is the key prerequisite to manifest a specifically interesting property of the material. The smallness of a sample rises a problem of the detection of the static magnetic response and of the electron spin resonance (ESR) signal. To overcome this problem, we propose to use a cantilever-based (torque-detected) setup with the capability of a simultaneous measurement of ESR and static magnetization. This setup offers a high sensitivity and the ability to acquire along with the ESR signal the components of the magnetization tensor in a single experimental run. Here, we present the working principle of this setup, as well as the estimate of its sensitivity from the measurements on the standard Co Tutton salt sample. © 2021, The Author(s).
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    Separate tuning of nematicity and spin fluctuations to unravel the origin of superconductivity in FeSe
    (London : Nature Publishing Group, 2020) Baek, S.-H.; Ok, J.M.; Kim, J.S.; Aswartham, S.; Morozov, I.; Chareev, D.; Urata, T.; Tanigaki, K.; Tanabe, Y.; Büchner, B.; Efremov, D.V.
    The interplay of orbital and spin degrees of freedom is the fundamental characteristic in numerous condensed matter phenomena, including high-temperature superconductivity, quantum spin liquids, and topological semimetals. In iron-based superconductors (FeSCs), this causes superconductivity to emerge in the vicinity of two other instabilities: nematic and magnetic. Unveiling the mutual relationship among nematic order, spin fluctuations, and superconductivity has been a major challenge for research in FeSCs, but it is still controversial. Here, by carrying out 77Se nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) measurements on FeSe single crystals, doped by cobalt and sulfur that serve as control parameters, we demonstrate that the superconducting transition temperature Tc increases in proportion to the strength of spin fluctuations, while it is independent of the nematic transition temperature Tnem. Our observation therefore directly implies that superconductivity in FeSe is essentially driven by spin fluctuations in the intermediate coupling regime, while nematic fluctuations have a marginal impact on Tc.
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    Strong spin resonance mode associated with suppression of soft magnetic ordering in hole-doped Ba1-xNaxFe2As2
    (London : Nature Publishing Group, 2019) Waßer, F.; Park, J.T.; Aswartham, S.; Wurmehl, S.; Sidis, Y.; Steffens, P.; Schmalzl, K.; Büchner, B.; Braden, M.
    Spin-resonance modes (SRM) are taken as evidence for magnetically driven pairing in Fe-based superconductors, but their character remains poorly understood. The broadness, the splitting and the spin-space anisotropies of SRMs contrast with the mostly accepted interpretation as spin excitons. We study hole-doped Ba1−xNaxFe2As2 that displays a spin reorientation transition. This reorientation has little impact on the overall appearance of the resonance excitations with a high-energy isotropic and a low-energy anisotropic mode. However, the strength of the anisotropic low-energy mode sharply peaks at the highest doping that still exhibits magnetic ordering resulting in the strongest SRM observed in any Fe-based superconductor so far. This remarkably strong SRM is accompanied by a loss of about half of the magnetic Bragg intensity upon entering the SC phase. Anisotropic SRMs thus can allow the system to compensate for the loss of exchange energy arising from the reduced antiferromagnetic correlations within the SC state.
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    Two distinct superconducting phases in LiFeAs
    (London : Nature Publishing Group, 2016) Nag, P.K.; Schlegel, R.; Baumann, D.; Grafe, H.-J.; Beck, R.; Wurmehl, S.; Büchner, B.; Hess, C.
    A non-trivial temperature evolution of superconductivity including a temperature-induced phase transition between two superconducting phases or even a time-reversal symmetry breaking order parameter is in principle expected in multiband superconductors such as iron-pnictides. Here we present scanning tunnelling spectroscopy data of LiFeAs which reveal two distinct superconducting phases: at = 18 K a partial superconducting gap opens, evidenced by subtle, yet clear features in the tunnelling spectra, i.e. particle-hole symmetric coherence peak and dip-hump structures. At Tc = 16 K, these features substantiate dramatically and become characteristic of full superconductivity. Remarkably, the distance between the dip-hump structures and the coherence peaks remains practically constant in the whole temperature regimeT ≤ . This rules out the connection of the dip-hump structures to an antiferromagnetic spin resonance.
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    Probing the reconstructed Fermi surface of antiferromagnetic BaFe2As2 in one domain
    (London : Nature Publishing Group, 2019) Watson, M.D.; Dudin, P.; Rhodes, L.C.; Evtushinsky, D.V.; Iwasawa, H.; Aswartham, S.; Wurmehl, S.; Büchner, B.; Hoesch, M.; Kim, T.K.
    A fundamental part of the puzzle of unconventional superconductivity in the Fe-based superconductors is the understanding of the magnetic and nematic instabilities of the parent compounds. The issues of which of these can be considered the leading instability, and whether weak- or strong-coupling approaches are applicable, are both critical and contentious. Here, we revisit the electronic structure of BaFe2As2 using angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES). Our high-resolution measurements of samples “detwinned” by the application of a mechanical strain reveal a highly anisotropic 3D Fermi surface in the low-temperature antiferromagnetic phase. By comparison of the observed dispersions with ab initio calculations, we argue that overall it is magnetism, rather than orbital/nematic ordering, which is the dominant effect, reconstructing the electronic structure across the Fe 3d bandwidth. Finally, using a state-of-the-art nano-ARPES system, we reveal how the observed electronic dispersions vary in real space as the beam spot crosses domain boundaries in an unstrained sample, enabling the measurement of ARPES data from within single antiferromagnetic domains, and showing consistence with the effective mono-domain samples obtained by detwinning.
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    Confined crystals of the smallest phase-change material
    (Washington, DC : American Chemical Society, 2013) Giusca, C.E.; Stolojan, V.; Sloan, J.; Börrnert, F.; Shiozawa, H.; Sader, K.; Rümmeli, M.H.; Büchner, B.; Silva, S.R.P.
    The demand for high-density memory in tandem with limitations imposed by the minimum feature size of current storage devices has created a need for new materials that can store information in smaller volumes than currently possible. Successfully employed in commercial optical data storage products, phase-change materials, that can reversibly and rapidly change from an amorphous phase to a crystalline phase when subject to heating or cooling have been identified for the development of the next generation electronic memories. There are limitations to the miniaturization of these devices due to current synthesis and theoretical considerations that place a lower limit of 2 nm on the minimum bit size, below which the material does not transform in the structural phase. We show here that by using carbon nanotubes of less than 2 nm diameter as templates phase-change nanowires confined to their smallest conceivable scale are obtained. Contrary to previous experimental evidence and theoretical expectations, the nanowires are found to crystallize at this scale and display amorphous-to-crystalline phase changes, fulfilling an important prerequisite of a memory element. We show evidence for the smallest phase-change material, extending thus the size limit to explore phase-change memory devices at extreme scales.
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    Nonlocal dielectric function and nested dark excitons in MoS2
    (London : Nature Publishing Group, 2019) Koitzsch, A.; Pawlik, A.-S.; Habenicht, C.; Klaproth, T.; Schuster, R.; Büchner, B.; Knupfer, M.
    Their exceptional optical properties are a driving force for the persistent interest in atomically thin transition metal dichalcogenides such as MoS2. The optical response is dominated by excitons. Apart from the bright excitons, which directly couple to light, it has been realized that dark excitons, where photon absorption or emission is inhibited by the spin state or momentum mismatch, are decisive for many optical properties. However, in particular the momentum dependence is difficult to assess experimentally and often remains elusive or is investigated by indirect means. Here we study the momentum dependent electronic structure experimentally and theoretically. We use angle-resolved photoemission as a one-particle probe of the occupied valence band structure and electron energy loss spectroscopy as a two-particle probe of electronic transitions across the gap to benchmark a single-particle model of the dielectric function ϵ(q, ω) against momentum dependent experimental measurements. This ansatz captures key aspects of the data surprisingly well. In particular, the energy region where substantial nesting occurs, which is at the origin of the strong light–matter interaction of thin transition metal dichalcogenides and crucial for the prominent C-exciton, is described well and spans a more complex exciton landscape than previously anticipated. Its local maxima in (q≠0,ω) space can be considered as dark excitons and might be relevant for higher order optical processes. Our study may lead to a more complete understanding of the optical properties of atomically thin transition metal dichalcogenides.