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Now showing 1 - 10 of 17
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    Engineering Kitaev exchange in stacked iridate layers: Impact of inter-layer species on in-plane magnetism
    (Cambridge : Royal Society of Chemistry, 2019) Yadav, R.; Eldeeb, M.S.; Ray, R.; Aswartham, S.; Sturza, M.I.; Nishimoto, S.; Van Den Brink, J.; Hozoi, L.
    Novel functionalities may be achieved in oxide electronics by appropriate stacking of planar oxide layers of different metallic species, MOp and M′Oq. The simplest mechanism allowing the tailoring of the electronic states and physical properties of such heterostructures is of electrostatic nature - charge imbalance between the M and M′ cations. Here we clarify the effect of interlayer electrostatics on the anisotropic Kitaev exchange in H3LiIr2O6, a recently proposed realization of the Kitaev spin liquid. By quantum chemical calculations, we show that the precise position of H+ cations between magnetically active [LiIr2O6]3- honeycomb-like layers has a strong impact on the magnitude of Kitaev interactions. In particular, it is found that stacking with straight interlayer O-H-O links is detrimental to in-plane Kitaev exchange since coordination by a single H-ion of the O ligand implies an axial Coulomb potential at the O site and unfavorable polarization of the O 2p orbitals mediating the Ir-Ir interactions. Our results therefore provide valuable guidelines for the rational design of Kitaev quantum magnets, indicating unprecedented Kitaev interactions of ≈40 meV if the linear interlayer linkage is removed.
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    Signatures of Light-Induced Potential Energy Surfaces in H2+
    (Bristol : IOP Publ., 2020) Kübel, M.; Spanner, M.; Dube, Z.; Naumov, A. Yu; Vrakking, M.J.J.; Corkum, P.B.; Villeneuve, D.M.; Staudte, A.
    Using theory and Cold Target Recoil Ion Momentum Spectroscopy we find signatures of light-induced molecular potential energy surfaces in the 3-dimensional proton momentum distributions of dissociating H+2. © 2020 Journal of Physics: Conference Series. All rights reserved.
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    Entropy driven chain effects on ligation chemistry
    (Cambridge : RSC, 2014) Pahnke, Kai; Brandt, Josef; Gryn'ova, Ganna; Lindner, Peter; Schweins, Ralf; Schmidt, Friedrich Georg; Lederer, Albena; Coote, Michelle L.; Barner-Kowollik, Christopher
    We report the investigation of fundamental entropic chain effects that enable the tuning of modular ligation chemistry – for example dynamic Diels–Alder (DA) reactions in materials applications – not only classically via the chemistry of the applied reaction sites, but also via the physical and steric properties of the molecules that are being joined. Having a substantial impact on the reaction equilibrium of the reversible ligation chemistry, these effects are important when transferring reactions from small molecule studies to larger or other entropically very dissimilar systems. The effects on the DA equilibrium and thus the temperature dependent degree of debonding (%debond) of different cyclopentadienyl (di-)functional poly(meth-)acrylate backbones (poly(methyl methacrylate), poly(iso-butyl methacrylate), poly(tert-butyl methacrylate), poly(iso-butyl acrylate), poly(n-butyl acrylate), poly(tert-butyl acrylate), poly(methyl acrylate) and poly(isobornyl acrylate)), linked via a difunctional cyanodithioester (CDTE) were examined via high temperature (HT) NMR spectroscopy as well as temperature dependent (TD) SEC measurements. A significant impact of not only chain mass and length with a difference in the degree of debonding of up to 30% for different lengths of macromonomers of the same polymer type but – remarkably – as well the chain stiffness with a difference in bonding degrees of nearly 20% for isomeric poly(butyl acrylates) is found. The results were predicted, reproduced and interpreted via quantum chemical calculations, leading to a better understanding of the underlying entropic principles.
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    General Time-Dependent Configuration-Interaction Singles II: The Atomic Case
    (Woodbury, NY : Inst., 2022-10-10) Carlström, Stefanos; Bertolino, Mattias; Dahlström, Jan Marcus; Patchkovskii, Serguei
    We present a specialization of the grid-based implementation of the time-dependent configuration-interaction singles described in the preceding paper [S. Carlström et al., preceding paper, Phys. Rev. A 106, 043104 (2022)]. to the case of spherical symmetry. We describe the intricate time propagator in detail and conclude with a few example calculations. Among these, of note are high-resolution photoelectron spectra in the vicinity of the Fano resonances in photoionization of neon and spin-polarized photoelectrons from xenon, in agreement with recent experiments.
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    Curled cation structures accelerate the dynamics of ionic liquids
    (Cambridge : RSC Publ., 2021) Rauber, Daniel; Philippi, Frederik; Kuttich, Björn; Becker, Julian; Kraus, Tobias; Hunt, Patricia; Welton, Tom; Hempelmann, Rolf; Kay, Christopher W.M.
    Ionic liquids are modern liquid materials with potential and actual implementation in many advanced technologies. They combine many favourable and modifiable properties but have a major inherent drawback compared to molecular liquids – slower dynamics. In previous studies we found that the dynamics of ionic liquids are significantly accelerated by the introduction of multiple ether side chains into the cations. However, the origin of the improved transport properties, whether as a result of the altered cation conformation or due to the absence of nanostructuring within the liquid as a result of the higher polarity of the ether chains, remained to be clarified. Therefore, we prepared two novel sets of methylammonium based ionic liquids; one set with three ether substituents and another set with three butyl side chains, in order to compare their dynamic properties and liquid structures. Using a range of anions, we show that the dynamics of the ether-substituted cations are systematically and distinctly accelerated. Liquefaction temperatures are lowered and fragilities increased, while at the same time cation–anion distances are slightly larger for the alkylated samples. Furthermore, pronounced liquid nanostructures were not observed. Molecular dynamics simulations demonstrate that the origin of the altered properties of the ether substituted ionic liquids is primarily due to a curled ether chain conformation, in contrast to the alkylated cations where the alkyl chains retain a linear conformation. Thus, the observed structure–property relations can be explained by changes in the geometric shape of the cations, rather than by the absence of a liquid nanostructure. Application of quantum chemical calculations to a simplified model system revealed that intramolecular hydrogen-bonding is responsible for approximately half of the stabilisation of the curled ether-cations, whereas the other half stems from non-specific long-range interactions. These findings give more detailed insights into the structure–property relations of ionic liquids and will guide the development of ionic liquids that do not suffer from slow dynamics.
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    General Time-Dependent Configuration-Interaction Singles I: The Molecular Case
    (Woodbury, NY : Inst., 2022-10-10) Carlström, Stefanos; Spanner, Michael; Patchkovskii, Serguei
    We present a grid-based implementation of the time-dependent configuration-interaction singles method suitable for computing the strong-field ionization of small gas-phase molecules. After outlining the general equations of motion used in our treatment of this method, we present example calculations of strong-field ionization of He, LiH, H2O, and C2H4 that demonstrate the utility of our implementation. The following paper [S. Carlström et al., following paper, Phys. Rev. A 106, 042806 (2022)] specializes to the case of spherical symmetry, which is applied to various atoms.
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    Optimization of quantum trajectories driven by strong-field waveforms
    (College Park : American Institute of Physics Inc., 2014) Haessler, S.; Balciunas, T.; Fan, G.; Andriukaitis, G.; Pugžlys, A.; Baltuška, A.; Witting, T.; Squibb, R.; Zaïr, A.; Tisch, J.W.G.; Marangos; Chipperfield, L.E.
    Quasifree field-driven electron trajectories are a key element of strong-field dynamics. Upon recollision with the parent ion, the energy transferred from the field to the electron may be released as attosecondduration extreme ultaviolet emission in the process of high-harmonic generation. The conventional sinusoidal driver fields set limitations on the maximum value of this energy transfer and the efficient return of the launched electron trajectories. It has been predicted that these limits can be significantly exceeded by an appropriately ramped-up cycle shape [L. E. Chipperfield et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 102, 063003 (2009)]. Here, we present an experimental realization of similar cycle-shaped waveforms and demonstrate control of the high-harmonic generation process on the single-atom quantum level via attosecond steering of the electron trajectories.With our improved optical cycles, we boost the field ionization launching the electron trajectories, increase the subsequent field-to-electron energy transfer, and reduce the trajectory duration. We demonstrate, in realistic experimental conditions, 2 orders of magnitude enhancement of the generated extreme ultraviolet flux together with an increased spectral extension. This application, which is only one example of what can be achieved with cycle-shaped high-field light waves, has significant implications for attosecond spectroscopy and molecular self-probing.
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    Intercalant-mediated Kitaev exchange in Ag3LiIr2O6
    (College Park, MD : APS, 2022) Yadav, Ravi; Reja, Sahinur; Ray, Rajyavardhan; van den Brink, Jeroen; Nishimoto, Satoshi; Yazyev, Oleg V.
    The recently synthesized Ag3LiIr2O6 has been proposed as a Kitaev magnet in proximity to the quantum spin liquid phase. We explore its microscopic Hamiltonian and magnetic ground state using many-body quantum chemistry methods and exact diagonalization techniques. Our calculations establish a dominant bond dependent ferromagnetic Kitaev exchange between Ir sites and find that the inclusion of Ag 4d orbitals in the configuration interaction calculations strikingly enhances the Kitaev exchange. Furthermore, using exact diagonalization of the nearest-neighbor fully anisotropic J−K−Γ Hamiltonian, we obtain the magnetic phase diagram as a function of further neighbor couplings. We find that the antiferromagnetic off-diagonal coupling stabilizes long range order, but the structure factor calculations suggest that the material is very close to the quantum spin liquid phase and the ordered state can easily collapse into a liquid by small perturbations such as structural distortion or bond disorder.
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    Static Disorder in Excitation Energies of the Fenna-Matthews-Olson Protein: Structure-Based Theory Meets Experiment
    (Washington, DC : ACS, 2020) Chaillet, Martin L.; Lengauer, Florian; Adolphs, Julian; Müh, Frank; Fokas, Alexander S.; Cole, Daniel J.; Chin, Alex W.; Renger, Thomas
    Inhomogeneous broadening of optical lines of the Fenna-Matthews-Olson (FMO) light-harvesting protein is investigated by combining a Monte Carlo sampling of low-energy conformational substates of the protein with a quantum chemical/electrostatic calculation of local transition energies (site energies) of the pigments. The good agreement between the optical spectra calculated for the inhomogeneous ensemble and the experimental data demonstrates that electrostatics is the dominant contributor to static disorder in site energies. Rotamers of polar amino acid side chains are found to cause bimodal distribution functions of site energy shifts, which can be probed by hole burning and single-molecule spectroscopy. When summing over the large number of contributions, the resulting distribution functions of the site energies become Gaussians, and the correlations in site energy fluctuations at different sites practically average to zero. These results demonstrate that static disorder in the FMO protein is in the realm of the central limit theorem of statistics. © 2020 American Chemical Society.
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    Self-assembly of endohedral metallofullerenes: A decisive role of cooling gas and metal-carbon bonding
    (Cambridge : Royal Society of Chemistry, 2016) Deng, Qingming; Heine, Thomas; Irle, Stephan; Popov, Alexey A.
    The endohedral metallofullerene (EMF) self-assembly process in Sc/carbon vapor in the presence and absence of an inert cooling gas (helium) is systematically investigated using quantum chemical molecular dynamics simulations. It is revealed that the presence of He atoms accelerates the formation of pentagons and hexagons and reduces the size of the self-assembled carbon cages in comparison with analogous He-free simulations. As a result, the Sc/C/He system simulations produce a larger number of successful trajectories (i.e. leading to Sc-EMFs) with more realistic cage-size distribution than simulations of the Sc/C system. The main Sc encapsulation mechanism involves nucleation of several hexagons and pentagons with Sc atoms already at the early stages of carbon vapor condensation. In such proto-cages, both Sc–C σ-bonds and coordination bonds between Sc atoms and the π-system of the carbon network are present. Sc atoms are thus rather labile and can move along the carbon network, but the overall bonding is sufficiently strong to prevent dissociation even at temperatures around 2000 kelvin. Further growth of the fullerene cage results in the encapsulation of one or two Sc atoms within the fullerene. In agreement with experimental studies, an extension of the simulations to Fe and Ti as the metal component showed that Fe-EMFs are not formed at all, whereas Ti is prone to form Ti-EMFs with small cage sizes, including Ti@C28-Td and Ti@C30-C2v(3).