By treating the electron-ion interaction as perturbation in the first-principles Hamiltonian, we have calculated the density response functions of a fluid alkali metal to find an interesting charge instability due to anomalous electronic density fluctuations occurring at some finite wave vector ${\bi Q}$ in a dilute fluid phase above the liquid-gas critical point. Since $|{\bi Q}|$ is smaller than the diameter of the Fermi surface, this instability necessarily impedes the electric conduction, implying its close relevance to the metal-insulator transition in fluid alkali metals.
While CaFeO$_3$ exhibits upon cooling a metal-insulator transition linked to charge ordering, SrFeO$_3$ and BaFeO$_3$ keep metallic behaviors down to very low temperatures. Moreover, alkaline-earth ferrites do not seem prone to orbital ordering in spite of the d$^4$ formal occupancy of Fe$^{4+}$. Here, from first-principles simulations, we show that the metal-insulator transition of CaFeO$_3$ is structurally triggered by oxygen rotation motions as in rare-earth nickelates. This not only further clarifies why SrFeO$_3$ and BaFeO$_3$ remain metallic but allows us to predict that an insulating ch…
The electronic structure changes of SmS surfaces under potassium (K) doping are elucidated using synchrotron-based core-level photoelectron spectroscopy and angle-resolved photoelectron spectroscopy (ARPES). The Sm core-level and ARPES spectra indicate that the Sm mean valence of the surface increased from the nearly divalent to trivalent states, with increasing K deposition. Carrier-induced valence transition (CIVT) from Sm$^{2+}$ to Sm$^{3+}$ exhibits a behavior opposite to that under conventional electron doping. Excess electrons are trapped by isolated excitons, which is inconsistent with …
Electron Spin Resonance and optical reflectivity measurements demonstrate a metal-insulator transition in Na_2CsC_60 as the system passes from the low temperature simple cubic to the high temperature {\it fcc} structure above 300 K. The non-conducting electronic state is especially unexpected in view of the metallic character of other, apparently isostructural fullerides, like K_3C_60. The occurence of this phase in Na_2CsC_60 suggests that alkali specific effects can not be neglected in the description of the electronic properties of alkali doped fullerides. We discuss the origin of the insul…
Artificially created two-dimensional (2D) interfaces or structures are ideal for seeking exotic phase transitions due to their highly tunable carrier density and interfacially enhanced many-body interactions. Here, we report the discovery of a metal-insulator transition (MIT) and an emergent gapped phase in the metal-semiconductor interface that is created in 2H-MoTe$_2$ via alkali-metal deposition. Using angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy, we found that the electron-phonon coupling is strong at the interface as characterized by a clear observation of replica shake-off bands. Such stron…
We present a new quantum molecular dynamics (MD) method where the electronic structure and atomic forces are solved by a real-space dynamical mean-field theory (DMFT). Contrary to most quantum MD methods that are based on effective single-particle wave functions, the DMFT approach is able to describe correlation-induced Mott metal-insulator transitions and the associated incoherent electronic excitations in an atomic liquid. We apply the DMFT-MD method to study Mott transitions in an atomic liquid model which can be viewed as the liquid-state generalization of the Hubbard model. The half-fille…
Excitonic insulators (EI) arise from the formation of bound electron-hole pairs (excitons) in semiconductors and provide a solid-state platform for quantum many-boson physics. Strong exciton-exciton repulsion is expected to stabilize condensed superfluid and crystalline phases by suppressing both density and phase fluctuations. Although spectroscopic signatures of EIs have been reported, conclusive evidence for strongly correlated EI states has remained elusive. Here, we demonstrate a strongly correlated spatially indirect two-dimensional (2D) EI ground state formed in transition metal dichalc…
Terahertz Kerr and Reflectivity Measurements on the Topological Insulator Bi2Se3
我们报告的第一个太赫兹克尔测量大块晶体的拓扑绝缘体Bi 2 Se 3。在T=10K和高达8T的场下，利用线偏振和圆偏振入射辐射测量了频率为5.24meV的实和虚克尔角和反射率。单一的无流体载流子体响应不能描述这种线型。具有小质量和令人惊讶的大关联光谱权重的表面态定量地适合所有数据。然而，载流子浓度不均匀性尚未被排除。一种方法，采用一个门被证明是有前途的分离表面从体效应。
Thin films provide a versatile platform to tune electron correlations and explore new physics in strongly correlated materials. Epitaxially grown thin films of the alkali-doped fulleride K$_{3+x}$C$_{60}$, for example, exhibit %various intriguing phenomena, including Mott transitions and superconductivity, depending on dimensionality and doping. Surprisingly, in the trilayer case, a strong electron-hole doping asymmetry has been observed in the superconducting phase, which is absent in the three-dimensional bulk limit. Using density-functional theory plus dynamical mean-field theory, we show t…
Excitonic insulator (EI) is an intriguing insulating phase of matter, where electrons and holes are bonded into pairs, so called excitons, and form a phase-coherent state via Bose-Einstein Condensation (BEC). Its theoretical concept has been proposed several decades ago, but the followed research is very limited, due to the rare occurrence of EI in natural materials and the lack of manipulating method of excitonic condensation. In this paper, we report the realization of a doping-controlled EI-to-semi-metal transition in Ta$_2$NiSe$_5$ using $in$-$situ$ potassium deposition. Combining with ang…
A low-temperature intervening metallic regime arising in the two-dimensional superconductor-insulator transition challenges our understanding of electronic fluids. Here we develop a gauge theory revealing that this emergent anomalous metal is a bosonic topological insulator where bulk transport is suppressed by mutual statistics interactions between out-of-condensate Cooper pairs and vortices and the longitudinal conductivity is mediated by symmetry-protected gapless edge modes. We explore the magnetic-field-driven superconductor-insulator transition in a niobium titanium nitride device and fi…
Superconductor to Mott insulator transition in YBa$_2$Cu$_3$O$_7$/LaCaMnO$_3$ heterostructures
由外部磁场、无序或空间限制等手段诱导的超导体到绝缘体的转变（SIT）是量子相变显著影响超导序参量的生动例证。为了寻求通过界面电荷转移实现SIT的新方法，我们研制了由高$T_c$超导体YBa $_2$ Cu $_3$ O $_7$（YBCO）和巨磁电阻铁磁体La $_{0.67}$ Ca $_{0.33}$ MnO $_3$（LCMO）组成的超薄超晶格。通过使用线性偏振共振X射线吸收光谱和磁性圆二色性，结合硬X射线光电子能谱，我们推导出一个完整的图片的界面载流子掺杂在铜酸盐和锰氧化物原子层，导致从超导过渡到一个不寻常的莫特绝缘状态出现的LCMO层厚度的增加。此外，与通常认为只有过渡金属离子才能对电荷转移过程做出响应相反，我们发现电荷也被界面的稀土和碱土金属离子主动补偿。这种通过纯电子掺杂而没有任何化学取代的阻碍作用的$T_c$的确定性控制是另一种有希望的途径，以解开无序对欠掺杂铜氧化物的赝能隙和电荷密度波相位的作用。
Supercritical fluid of quantum electrons in three-dimensional superconducting fullerides
Beijing Academy of Quantum Information Sciences (BAQIS)（北京量子信息科学研究院）；Beijing National Laboratory for Condensed Matter Physics, Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院物理研究所凝聚态物理国家实验室）；University of Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院大学）；Advanced Institute of Materials Research (AIMR), Tohoku University（东北大学材料研究高等研究院）；Beijing Huihaoyu Intelligent Technology Co., Ltd.（北京慧好宇智能科技有限公司）；Department of Chemistry, Aarhus University（奥胡斯大学化学系）；Osaka Institute of Technology（大阪工业大学）；Institute of Physics（萨格勒布物理研究所）；Zagreb, Croatia
In correlated electronic systems, strong interactions and the interplay between different degrees of freedom may give rise to anomalous charge transport properties, which can be tuned by external parameters like temperature and magnetic field. Recently, magnetic quantum oscillations and metallic low-temperature thermal conductivity have been observed in the Kondo insulator YbB$_{12}$, whose resistivity is a few orders of magnitude higher than those of conventional metals. As yet, these unusual observations are not fully understood. Here we present a detailed investigation of the behavior of Yb…
Heavily oxygen deficient NdNiO$_3$ (NNO) films, which are insulating due to electron localization, contain pristine regions that undergo a hidden metal-insulator transition. Increasing oxygen content increases the connectivity of the metallic regions and the metal-insulator transition is first revealed, upon reaching the percolation threshold, by the presence of hysteresis. Only upon further oxygenation is the global metallic state (with a change in the resistivity slope) eventually achieved. It is shown that sufficient oxygenation leads to linear temperature dependence of resistivity in the m…
Within condensed-matter systems, strong electronic interactions often lead to exotic quantum phases. A recent manifestation of this is the unexpected observation of magnetic quantum oscillations and metallic thermal transport, both properties of systems with Fermi surfaces of itinerant quasiparticles, in the Kondo insulators SmB6 and YbB$_{12}$. To understand these phenomena, it is informative to study their evolution as the energy gap of the Kondo-Insulator state is closed by a large magnetic field. We show here that both the quantum-oscillation frequency and the cyclotron mass display a stro…
Materials with strongly-correlated electrons exhibit interesting phenomena such as metal-insulator transitions and high-temperature superconductivity. In stark contrast to ordinary metals, electron transport in these materials is thought to resemble the flow of viscous fluids. Despite their differences, it is predicted that transport in both, conventional and correlated materials, is fundamentally limited by the uncertainty principle applied to energy dissipation. Here we discover hydrodynamic electron flow in the Weyl-semimetal tungsten phosphide (WP2). Using thermal and magneto-electric tran…
Monovalent metals contain half filled band (HFB) of s-electrons. Emphasizing importance of Coulomb repulsions in HFB in 2D and 1D monovalent systems we sketched a theory (2018) for ambient temperature granular superconductivity reported by Thapa and Pandey (2018) in Au-Ag nanostructures (updated by Thapa et al., 2019). Sharpening our theory, we suggest that \textit{Coulomb repulsions in certain structurally perturbed regions (atomic clusters, stacking faults, grain boundaries etc.) create nanoscale reservoirs of singlet electron pairs}. These low dimensional patches are hybridized to a backgro…
We provide semi-rigorous arguments that the Homogeneous Electron Fluid (HEF) has a colloidal phase separating the Wigner Crystal from the high density fluid phase. Near the crossover between crystal and fluid ground state energies, the argument is quite general and valid for practically any quantum transition between a crystal and a more amorphous phase. In this regime, the colloid is a gel and its "Goldstone" modes are flows of irregular fluid droplets separated by crystalline walls. A metal insulator transition occurs when a single bubble of fluid spans the entire system. Beyond this transit…
We argue that a correlated fluid of electrons and holes can exhibit a fractional quantum Hall effect at zero magnetic field analogous to the Laughlin state at filling $1/m$. We introduce a variant of the Laughlin wavefunction for electrons and holes and show that for $m=1$ it is the exact ground state of a free fermion model that describes $p_x + i p_y$ excitonic pairing. For $m>1$ we develop a simple composite fermion mean field theory, and we present evidence that our wavefunction correctly describes this phase. We derive an interacting Hamiltonian for which our wavefunction is the exact gro…
The Frenkel line and the pseudogap: an analogy between classical and electronic fluids
Université de Sherbrooke（舍布鲁克大学）；Flatiron Institute（平顿研究所）；Université Paris-Saclay（巴黎萨克雷大学）；CNRS（法国国家科学研究中心）；CEA（法国原子能和替代能源委员会）；Institut de physique théorique（理论物理研究所）；Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières（魁北克三河大学）
We present a general theory of atomic self-diffusion in the vicinity of a Mott metal-insulator transition in fluid metals. Upon decreasing the electron correlation from the Mott insulating phase, the delocalization of electrons gives rise to an increasing attractive interatomic interaction, which is expected to introduce an additional friction, hence reducing the atomic diffusivity. Yet, our quantum molecular dynamics simulations find an intriguing enhancement of the diffusion coefficient induced by the emerging attractive force. We show that this counterintuitive phenomenon results from the r…
Spontaneous orbital-selective Mott transitions and the Jahn-Teller metal of A$_3$C$_{60}$
碱金属掺杂的富勒烯A $_3$ C $_{60}$是半填充的三轨道Hubbard系统，其在莫特绝缘体旁边显示出非常规的超导相。虽然这种配对被认为是由有效的负洪德耦合引起的，但在莫特跃迁附近的极不寻常的扬-泰勒金属，具有局域和巡回电子，还没有被理解。这种性质是一致的解释以前未被认识到的现象：自发过渡的多轨道系统与负Hund耦合到一个轨道选择性莫特状态。这种破缺态没有普通轨道矩，其特征在于依赖于轨道的两体算符（双占据）或依赖于轨道的动能，可以被视为奇频超导的对角阶版本。我们建议，最近发现的Jahn-Teller金属相Rb $_x$ Cs $_{3-x}$ C $_{60}$是这种新的物质状态的实验实现。
Observation of two-component exciton condensates in an excitonic insulator
University of California, Berkeley（加州大学伯克利分校）；Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory（劳伦斯伯克利国家实验室）；National Institute for Materials Science（物质材料研究机构）；University of Texas at Austin（德克萨斯大学奥斯汀分校）；Kavli Energy NanoScience Institute, University of California Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory（加州大学伯克利分校与劳伦斯伯克利国家实验室卡弗里能源纳米科学研究所）
