Doped NiO: the Mottness of a charge transfer insulator
Friederike Wrobel, Hyowon Park, Changhee Sohn, Haw-Wen Hsia, Jian-Min Zuo, Hyeondeok Shin, Ho Nyung Lee, P. Ganesh, Anouar Benali, Paul R. C. Kent, Olle Heinone… 展开作者
Friederike Wrobel, Hyowon Park, Changhee Sohn, Haw-Wen Hsia, Jian-Min Zuo, Hyeondeok Shin, Ho Nyung Lee, P. Ganesh, Anouar Benali, Paul R. C. Kent, Olle Heinonen, Anand Bhattacharya
The evolution of the electronic structures of strongly correlated insulators with doping has long been a central fundamental question in condensed matter physics; it is also of great practical relevance for applications. We have studied the evolution of NiO under hole {\em and} electron doping using high-quality thin film and a wide range of experimental and theoretical methods. The evolution is in both cases very smooth with dopant concentration. The band gap is asymmetric under electron and hole doping, consistent with a charge-transfer insulator picture, and is reduced faster under hole than electron doping. For both electron and hole doping, occupied states are introduced at the top of the valence band. The formation of deep donor levels under electron doping and the inability to pin otherwise empty states near the conduction band edge is indicative that local electron addition and removal energies are dominated by a Mott-like Hubbard $U$-interaction even though the global bandgap is predominantly a charge-transfer type gap.
We construct the low energy theory of a doped Mott insulator, such as the high-temperature superconductors, by explicitly integrating over the degrees of freedom far away from the chemical potential. For either hole or electron doping, a charge 2e bosonic field emerges at low energy. The charge 2e boson mediates dynamical spectral weight transfer across the Mott gap and creates a new charge e excitation by binding a hole. The result is a bifurcation of the electron dispersion below the chemical potential as observed recently in angle-resolved photoemission on Pb-doped Bi_2Sr_2CaCu_2O_{8+δ} (Pb…
We introduce the notion of superstructure Mottness to describe the Mott and Wigner-Mott transition in doped strongly correlated electron systems at commensurate filling fractions away from one electron per site. We show that superstructure Mottness emerges in an inhomogeneous electron system when the superstructure contains an odd number of electrons per supercell. We argue that superstructure Mottness exists even in the absence of translation symmetry breaking by a superlattice, provided that the extended or intersite Coulomb interaction is strong. In the latter case, superstructure Mottness …
High-temperature superconductivity in the copper-oxide ceramics remains an unsolved problem because we do not know what the propagating degrees of freedom are in the normal state. As a result, we do not know what are the weakly interacting degrees of freedom which pair up to form the superconducting condensate. That the electrons are not the propagating degrees of freedom in the cuprates is seen most directly from experiments that show spectral weight redistributions over all energy scales. Of course, the actual propagating degrees of freedom minimize such spectral rearrangements. This review …
The phase diagram of the high-Tc cuprates is dominated by the Mott insulating phase of the parent compounds. As we approach it from large doping, a standard Fermi-liquid gradually turns into a bad non-Fermi liquid metal, a process which culminates in the pseudogap regime, in which the antinodal region in momentum space acquires a gap before reaching a fully gapped Mott state. Here we show that experiments for electron- and hole-doped BaFe2As2 support an analogous scenario. The doping evolution is dominated by the influence of a Mott insulator that would be realized for half-filled conduction b…
We investigate the physics of frustrated 3-leg Hubbard ladders in the band limit, when hopping across the ladder's rungs (t$_{\perp}$) is of the same order as hopping along them (t) much greater than the onsite Coulomb repulsion (U). We show that this model exhibits a striking electron-hole asymmetry close to half-filling: the hole-doped system at low temperatures develops a Resonating Valence Bond (RVB)-like d-wave gap (pseudogap close to ($π$,0)) coinciding with gapless nodal excitations (nodal liquid); in contrast, the electron-doped system is seen to develop a Mott gap at the nodes, whilst…
Stripe phases were predicted to arise in doped antiferromagnets through competition between magnetism and the kinetic energy of mobile carriers (typically holes). In copper-oxides the main experimental evidence for stripes is neutron scattering from La1.48Nd0.4Sr0.12CuO4 (LNSCO) and La1.875Ba0.125CuO4 (LBCO) which reveals coexisting static spin and charge order whose wavelengths differ by a factor of two, reminiscent of charged rivers separating regions of oppositely-phased antiferromagnetism. A neutron is an electrically neutral object, however, so does not detect charge but rather its associ…
Though most fermionic Mott insulators order at low temperatures, ordering is ancillary to their insulating behaviour. Our emphasis here is on disentangling ordering from the intrinsic strongly correlated physics of a doped half-filled band. To this end, we focus on the 2D Hubbard model. Because the charge gap arises from on-site correlations, we implement a non-perturbative approach which incorporates local physics. Crucial to this method is a self-consistent two-site dynamical cluster expansion which builds in the nearest-neighbour energy scale, $J$. At half-filling, we find that the spectral…
Thermoelectric properties of the system La$_2$NiO$_{4+δ}$ have been studied ab initio. Large Seebeck coefficient values are predicted for the parent compound, and to some extent remain in the hole-doped metallic phase, accompanied of an increase in the conductivity. This system, due to its layered structure would be a suitable candidate for an improvement of its thermoelectric figure of merit by nanostructurization in thin films, that has already been shown to increase the electrical conductivity ($σ$). Our calculations show that in the region around La$_2$NiO$_{4.05}$ the system has a large t…
We investigate charge distribution in the recently discovered high-$T_c$ superconductors, layered nickelates. With increasing value of charge-transfer energy we observe the expected crossover from the cuprate to the local triplet regime upon hole doping. We find that the $d-p$ Coulomb interaction $U_{dp}$ plays a role and makes Zhang-Rice singlets less favorable, while the amplitude of local triplets is enhanced. By investigating the effective two-band model with orbitals of $x^2-y^2$ and $s$ symmetries we show that antiferromagnetic interactions dominate for electron doping. The screened inte…
We introduce an effective model for $e_g$ electrons to describe quasi-two-dimensional layered La$_{2-x}$Sr$_{x}$NiO$_4$ nickelates and study it using correlated wave functions on $8 \times 8 $ and $6 \times 6 $ clusters. The effective Hamiltonian includes the kinetic energy, on-site Coulomb interactions for $e_g$ electrons (intraorbital $U$ and Hund's exchange $J_H$) and the coupling between $e_g$ electrons and Jahn-Teller distortions (static modes). The experimental ground state phases with inhomogeneous charge, spin and orbital order at the dopings $x=1/3$ and $x=1/2$ are reproduced very wel…
The generic phase diagram of lightly hole-doped high-$T_c$-cuprates hosts antiferromagnetic insulating phase with well-defined spin-wave excitations. Contrary to the weak-coupling prediction, these modes persist up to the overdoped metallic regime as intense and dispersive paramagnons. Here we report on our study of the low-energy magnetic and charge excitations within the extended Hubbard model at strong-coupling, using a modified $1/N$ expansion method with a variational state serving as the saddle point solution. Despite clear separation of magnetic and Hubbard-$U$ energy scales, we find th…
Thermoelectric properties of the system La$_2$NiO$_{4+δ}$ have been recently discussed [Phys. Rev. B 86, 165114 (2012)] via ab initio calculations. An optimum hole-doping value was obtained with reasonable thermopower and thermoelectric figure of merit being calculated. Here, a large increase in the thermoelectric performance through lattice strain and the corresponding atomic relaxations is predicted. This increase would be experimentally attainable via growth in thin films of the material on top of different substrates. A small tensile strain would produce large thermoelectric figures of mer…
Using \emph{ab initio} band structure methods and DFT+dynamical mean-field theory approach we explore the possible formation of spin and charge stripes in the Ni-O plane of hole-doped infinite-layer nickelates, $R$NiO$_2$. Our results reveal a remarkable instability of the $C$-type $(110)$ spin state with undistorted lattice towards the formation of the spin-density, charge- and bond-disproportionation stripe phases accompanied by in-plane``breathing''-like distortions of the crystal structure. Our work gives a comprehensive picture of competing charge and spin stripe states, with possible fru…
Using a combination of {\it ab initio} bandstructure methods and dynamical mean-field theory we study the single-particle spectrum of the prototypical charge-transfer insulator NiO. Good agreement with photoemission and inverse-photoemission spectra is obtained for both stoichiometric and hole-doped systems. In spite of a large Ni-$d$ spectral weight at the top of the valence band the doped holes are found to occupy mainly the ligand $p$ orbitals. Moreover, high hole doping leads to a significant reconstruction of the single-particle spectrum accompanied by a filling of the correlation gap.
We study the physics on the paramagnetic side of the phase diagram of the cobaltates, $Na_{x}CoO_{2}$, with an implementation of cellular dynamical mean field theory (CDMFT) with the non-crossing approximation (NCA) for the one-band Hubbard model on a triangular lattice. At low doping we find that the low energy physics is dominated by a quasi-dispersionless band. At half-filling, we find a metal-insulator transition at $U_{c}=5.6\pm0.15t$ which depends weakly on the cluster size. The onset of the metallic state occurs through the growth of a coherence peak at the chemical potential. Away from…
Using a combination of th local-density approximtion (LDA) and dynamicla mean-field theory (DMFT) calculations, we explore the correlated electronic structure of a member of the layered Iron oxychalcogenide Na_{2}Fe_{2}OSe_{2}. We find that the parent compund is a multi-orbital Mott insulator. Surprisingly, and somewhat reminiscent of the doped high-T_{c} cuprates, carrier localization is found to persist upon weak hole doping because the chemical potential lies in a gap structure wit almost vanishing density-of-states (DOS). On the other hand, in remarkable contrast, electron doping drives an…
Computing superconducting properties starting from an exactly solvable model for a doped Mott insulator stands as a grand challenge. We have recently shown that this can be done starting from the Hatsugai-Kohmoto (HK) model which can be understood generally as the minimal model that breaks the non-local $\mathbb Z_2$ symmetry of a Fermi liquid, thereby constituting a new quartic fixed point for Mott physics [Phillips et al., Nature Physics 16, 1175 (2020); Huang et al., Nature Physics (2022)]. In the current work, we compute the thermodynamics, condensation energy, and electronic properties su…
We have measured optical reflectivity of Li and Ti doped NiO (LTNO) in the infrared range at various temperatures. A Drude-like absorption is found at low energy, $ω<$ 100 cm$^{-1}$ and its spectral weight increases substantially as temperature decreases. This observation and DC-resistivity result show that LTNO has a conductive grain and resistive boundary. Such composite structure provides evidence of the Maxwell-Wagner (MW) mechanism as the origin of the high dielectric constant $ε_{o}$. We propose a three-phase granular structure and show that this extended MW model explains the observed f…
We performed a resonant inelastic X-ray scattering (RIXS) study of La$_{2-x}$Sr$_{x}$NiO$_{4+δ}$ (LSNO) at the oxygen $K$ edge to investigate the nature of the doped holes with regard to charge excitations. Charge excitations of the hole-doped nickelates are found to be almost independent of momentum transfer, indicating that the doped holes are strongly localized in character. Additionally, conspicuous changes in energy position are in temperature dependence. These characters are observed in stark contrast to those of the high-$T_{c}$ cuprate La$_{2-x}$Sr$_{x}$CuO$_{4}$ (LSCO), where delocali…
The insulator to metal phase transition in NiO is studied within the framework of reduced density matrix functional theory and density functional theory. We find that the spectral density obtained using reduced density matrix functional theory is in good agreement with experiments both undoped as well as doped NiO. We find that the physical description of the hole-doping induced phase transition \emph{qualitatively differs} depending on whether NiO is calculated within density functional theory or reduced density matrix functional. In the former case the underlying mechanism of the phase trans…
We report the first empirical demonstration that resonant inelastic x-ray scattering (RIXS) is sensitive to \emph{collective} magnetic excitations in $S=1$ systems by probing the Ni $L_3$-edge of La$_{2-x}$Sr$_x$NiO$_4$ ($x = 0, 0.33, 0.45$). The magnetic excitation peak is asymmetric, indicating the presence of single and multi spin-flip excitations. As the hole doping level is increased, the zone boundary magnon energy is suppressed at a much larger rate than that in hole doped cuprates. Based on the analysis of the orbital and charge excitations observed by RIXS, we argue that this differen…
We have studied the chemical potential shift in La$_{2-x}$Sr$_x$NiO$_4$ and the charge ordering transition in La$_{1.67}$Sr$_{0.33}$NiO$_4$ by photoemission spectroscopy. The result shows a large ($\sim$ 1 eV/hole) downward shift of the chemical potential with hole doping in the high-doping regime ($δ\gtrsim$ 0.33) while the shift is suppressed in the low-doping regime ($δ\lesssim$ 0.33). This suppression is attributed to a segregation of doped holes on a microscopic scale when the hole concentration is lower than $δ\simeq 1/3$. In the $δ= 1/3$ sample, the photoemission intensity at the chemic…
Quantum spin liquid states, in which spins are quantum-mechanically delocalized in direction, have been so far studied for charge-localized Mott insulators arising from strong repulsive interaction. Recently, however, it was found that the doped Mott insulator with a triangular lattice, $κ$-(ET)$_4$Hg$_{2.89}$Br$_8$, exhibits both spin-liquid-like magnetism and metallic electrical conduction. Thus, it is now possible to experimentally explore how the spin liquidity affects the electrical conduction, an issue that has received a great deal of theoretical attention. Here, with a newly developed …
The recent discovery of high-temperature superconductivity (HTSC) in doped Iron pnictides is the latest example of unanticipated behavior exhibited by $d$- and $f$-band materials. The symmetry of the SC gap, along with the mechanism of its emergence from the ``normal'' state is a central issue in this context. Here, motivated by a host of experimental signatures suggesting strong correlations in the Fe-pnictides, we undertake a detailed study of their normal state. Focussing on symmetry-unbroken phases, we use the correlated band structure method, LDA+DMFT, to study the one-particle responses …
The Mott insulating phase of the parent compounds is frequently taken as starting point for the underdoped high-$T_c$ cuprate superconductors. In particular, the pseudogap state is often considered as deriving from the Mott insulator. In this work, we systematically investigate different weakly-doped Mott insulators on the square and triangular lattice to clarify the relationship between the pseudogap and Mottness. We show that doping a two-dimensional Mott insulator does not necessarily lead to a pseudogap phase. Despite its inherent strong-coupling nature, we find that the existence or absen…
We study the optical conductivity in doped nickelates, and find the dramatic difference of the spectrum in the gap ($ω$$\alt$4 eV) between one- (1D) and two-dimensional (2D) nickelates. The difference is shown to be caused by the dependence of hopping integral on dimensionality. The theoretical results explain consistently the experimental data in 1D and 2D nickelates, Y$_{2-x}$Ca$_x$BaNiO$_5$ and La$_{2-x}$Sr$_x$NiO$_4$, respectively. The relation between the spectrum in the X-ray aborption experiments and the optical conductivity in La$_{2-x}$Sr$_x$NiO$_4$ is discussed.
Superconductivity found in doped NdNiO$_2$ is puzzling as two local symmetries of doped NiO$_2$ layers compete, with presumably far-reaching implications for the involved mechanism: a cuprate-like regime with Zhang-Rice singlets {\cblue is replaced by local triplet states at realistic values of charge-transfer energy, which would suggest a rather different superconductivity scenario from high-$T_c$ cuprates}. We address this competition by investigating Ni$_4$O$_8$ clusters with periodic boundary conditions in the parameter range relevant for the superconducting nickelates. With increasing val…
A giant low-frequency, in-plane dielectric constant, eps~10^6, for epitaxial thin films of Ca(1-x)La(x)MnO(3) (x<=0.03) was observed over a broad temperature range, 4K <= T 300K. This phenomenon is attributed to an internal barrier-layer capacitor (IBLC) structure, with insulating boundaries between semiconducting grains. The room-temperature eps increases substantially with electron (La) doping. The measured values of eps exceed those of conventional two-phase IBLC materials based on (Ba,Sr)TiO(3) as well as recently discovered CaCu(3)Ti(4)O(12) and (Li,Ti) doped NiO.
We derive the effective single-band Hamiltonian in the flat NiO$_2$ planes for nickelate compounds Nd$_{1-x}$Sr$_x$NiO$_2$. We first implement the first-principles calculation to study electronic structures of nickelates using the Heyd-Scuseria-Ernzerhof hybrid density functional and derive a three-band Hubbard model for Ni-O $pdσ$ bands of Ni$^+$ $3d_{x^2-y^2}$ and O$^{2-}$ $2p_{x/y}$ orbitals in the NiO$_2$ planes. To obtain the effective one-band $t$-$t'$-$J$ model Hamiltonian, we perform the exact diagonalization of the three-band Hubbard model for the Ni$_5$O$_{16}$ cluster and map the lo…
Two families of high temperature superconductors whose critical temperatures are higher than 50K are known. One is the copper oxides and the other is the iron-based superconductors. Comparisons of mechanisms between these two in terms of common ground as well as distinctions will greatly help in searching for higher Tc superconductors. However, studies on mechanisms for the iron family based on first principles calculations are few. Here we first show that the superconductivity emerges in the state-of-the-art numerical calculations for an ab initio multi-orbital model of an electron-doped iron…
We studied the relationship between the charge doping and the correlation, and its effects on the spectral function of the BaFe$_2$As$_2$ compound in the framework of the density functional theory combined with the dynamical mean field theory (DFT+DMFT). The calculated mass enhancements showed that the electronic correlation varies systematically from weak to strong when moving from the heavily electron-doped regime to the heavily hole-doped one. Since the compound has a multi-orbital nature, the correlation is orbital-dependent and it increases as hole-doping increases. The Fe-3d$_{xy}$ (xy) …
Perovskite-type BiNiO$_3$ is an insulating antiferromagnet in which a charge disproportionation occurs at the Bi site. La substitution for Bi suppresses the charge disproportionation and makes the system metallic. We have measured the photoemission and x-ray absorption (XAS) spectra of Bi$_{1-x}$La$_{x}$NiO$_{3}$ to investigate how the electronic structure changes with La doping. From Ni $2p$ XAS, we observed an increase of the valence of Ni from 2+ toward 3+. Combined with the core-level photoemission study, it was found that the average valence of Bi remains $\sim 4+$ and that the Ni valence…
For La_(1 2/3)Sr_(1/3)NiO_4 -- a commensurately doped Mott-Hubbard system -- charge- and spin-ordering in a stripe phase has been investigated by phononic and magnetic Raman scattering. Formation of a superlattice and an opening of a pseudo-gap in the electron-hole excitation spectra as well as two types of double-spin excitations -- within the antiferromagnetic domain and across the domain wall -- are observed below the charge-ordering transition. The temperature dependence suggests that the spin ordering is driven by charge ordering and that fluctuating stripes persist above the ordering tra…
We characterize the local structure and correlations of charge stripes in La(1.725)Sr(0.275)NiO(4) using transmission-electron microscopy. We present direct evidence that the stripe modulation is indeed one-dimensional within each NiO(2) plane. Furthermore, we show that individual stripes tend to be either site-centered or bond-centered, with a bias towards the former. The spacing between stripes often fluctuates about the mean, contributing to a certain degree of frustration of the approximate body-centered stacking along the c-axis. These results confirm ideas inferred from previous neutron-…
Because the cuprate superconductors are doped Mott insulators, it would be advantageous to solve even a toy model that exhibits both Mottness and superconductivity. We consider the Hatsugai-Kohmoto model, an exactly solvable system that is a prototypical Mott insulator above a critical interaction strength at half filling. Upon doping or reducing the interaction strength, our exact calculations show that the system becomes a non-Fermi liquid metal with a superconducting instability. In the presence of a weak pairing interaction, the instability produces a thermal transition to a superconductin…
Underdoped Mott insulators provide us with a challenge of many-body physics. Recent renewed understanding is discussed in terms of the evolution of pole and zero structure of the single-particle Green's function. Pseudogap as well as Fermi arc/pocket structure in the underdoped cuprates is well reproduced from the recent cluster extension of the dynamical mean-field theory. Emergent coexisting zeros and poles set the underdoped Mott insulator apart from the Fermi liquid, separated by topological transitions. Cofermion proposed as a generalization of exciton in the slave-boson framework account…
Determining the nature of electronic states in doped Mott insulators remains a challenging task. In the case of tetragonal La$_{2-x}$Sr$_{x}$NiO$_{4}$, the occurrence of diagonal charge and spin stripe order in the ground state is now well established. In contrast, the nature of the high-temperature "disordered" state from which the stripe order develops has long been a subject of controversy, with considerable speculation regarding a polaronic liquid. Following on the recent detection of dynamic charge stripes, we use neutron scattering measurements on an $x=0.25$ crystal to demonstrate that …
The recent discovery of superconductivity in Nd$_{1-x}$Sr$_{x}$NiO$_2$ has drawn significant attention in the field. A key open question regards the evolution of the electronic structure with respect to hole doping. Here, we exploit x-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS) and resonant inelastic x-ray scattering (RIXS) to probe the doping dependent electronic structure of the NiO$_2$ planes. Upon doping, a higher energy feature in Ni $L_3$ edge XAS develops in addition to the main absorption peak. By comparing our data to atomic multiplet calculations including $D_{4h}$ crystal field, the doping in…
Since the discovery of superconductivity in infinite-layer nickelates RNiO$_2$ (R=La, Pr, Nd), great research efforts have been paid to unveil its underlying superconducting mechanism. However, the physical origin of the intriguing hole-doped superconductivity phase diagram, characterized by a superconductivity dome sandwiched between two weak insulators, is still unclear. Here, we present a microscopic theory for electronic structure of nickelates from a fundamental model-based perspective. We found that the appearance of weak insulator phase in lightly and heavily hole-doped regime is domina…
The recent discovery of superconductivity in hole-doped NdNiO$_2$ thin films has captivated the condensed matter physics community. Such compounds with a formal Ni$^+$ valence have been theoretically proposed as possible analogues of the cuprates, and the exploration of their electronic structure and pairing mechanism may provide important insights into the phenomenon of unconventional superconductivity. At the modeling level, there are however fundamental issues that need to be resolved. While it is generally agreed that the low-energy properties of cuprates can to a large extent be captured …
Superconductivity with $T_c \approx 15K$ was recently found in doped NdNiO$_2$. The Ni$^{1+}$O$_2$ layers are expected to be Mott insulators so hole doping should produce Ni$^{2+}$ with $S=1$, incompatible with robust superconductivity. We show that the NiO$_2$ layers fall inside a ``critical'' region where the large $pd$ hybridization favors a singlet $^1\!A_1$ hole-doped state like in CuO$_2$. However, we find that the superexchange is about one order smaller than in cuprates, thus a magnon ``glue'' is very unlikely and another mechanism needs to be found.
Using density functional based LDA+U method and linear-response theory, we study the magnetic exchange interactions of the superconductor Nd{1-x}Sr{x}NiO2. Our calculated nearest-neighbor exchange constant J1=82 meV is large, weakly affected by doping and is only slightly smaller than that found in the sister compound CaCuO2. We however find that the hole doping significantly enhances the inter--layer exchange coupling as it affects the magnetic moment of the Ni-3d{3z2-r2} orbital. This can be understood in terms of small hybridization of Ni-3d{3z2-r2} within the NiO2 plane which results in a …
Possible routes to superconductivity in the surface layers of V-doped Mg$_{1-δ}$Ti$_2$O$_4$ through multiple charge transfers and suppression of Jahn-Teller activity
We report a detailed neutron scattering study of the ordering of spins and holes in oxygen-doped La(2)NiO(4.133). The single-crystal sample exhibits the same oxygen-interstitial order but better defined charge-stripe order than that studied previously in crystals with d = 0.125. In particular, charge order is observed up to a temperature at least twice that of the magnetic transition, T_m = 110.5 K. On cooling through T_m, the wave vector ε, equal to half the charge-stripe density within an NiO(2) layer, jumps discontinuously from 1/3 to 0.2944. It continues to decrease with further cooling, s…
We propose the parent compound of the newly discovered superconducting nickelate Nd$_{1-x}$Sr$_{x}$NiO$_{2}$ as a self-doped Mott insulator, in which the low-density Nd-$5d$ conduction electrons couple to localized Ni-3$% d_{x^{2}-y^{2}}$ electrons to form Kondo spin singlets at low temperatures. This proposal is motivated with our analyses of the reported resistivity and Hall coefficient data in the normal state, showing logarithmic temperature dependence at low temperatures. In the strong Kondo coupling limit, we derive a generalized $t$-$J$ model with both Kondo singlets and nickel holons m…
A strong anisotropic distribution of the holes in Ni 3d and O 2p orbitals is observed in the polarization dependent O1s and Ni2p3/2 x-ray absorption spectroscopy of the linear-chain nickelate Y1-xCaxBaNiO5 (x = 0, 0.05, 0.1, 0.2), which demonstrates the one-dimensional nature of the electronic state in these compounds. Furthermore, the additional holes introduced by Ca-doping occupy both O 2p and Ni 3d orbitals along the NiO5 chains. By comparing the experimental Ni 2p3/2 absorption spectra of Y1-xCaxBaNiO5 to those from charge transfer multiplet calculations we can derive the orbital characte…
Doped antiferromagnets host a vast array of physical properties and learning how to control them is one of the biggest challenges of condensed matter physics. La$_{1.7}$Sr$_{0.3}$NiO$_4$ (LSNO) is a classic example of such a material. At low temperatures holes introduced via substitution of La by Sr segregate into lines to form boundaries between magnetically ordered domains in the form of stripes. The stripes become dynamic at high temperatures, but LSNO remains insulating presumably because an interplay between magnetic correlations and electron-phonon coupling localizes charge carriers. Mag…
Understanding the electronic behavior of Ni$^{2+}$ in a square planar environment of oxygen is the key to unravel the origin of the recently discovered superconductivity in the hole doped nickelate Nd$_{0.8}$Sr$_{0.2}$NiO$_2$. To identify the major similarities/dissimilarities between nickelate and cuprate superconductivity, the study of the electronic structure of Ni$^{2+}$ and Cu$^{2+}$ in an identical square planar environment is essential. In order to address these questions, we investigate the electronic structure of Sr$_2$CuO$_3$ and Ni doped Sr$_2$CuO$_3$ single crystals containing (Cu/…
