When Landau levels (LLs) become degenerate near the Fermi energy in the quantum Hall regime, interaction effects can drastically modify the electronic ground state. We study the quantum Hall ferromagnet formed in a two-dimensional hole gas around the LL filling factor $ν=1$ in the vicinity of a LL crossing in the heave-hole valence band. Cavity spectroscopy in the strong-coupling regime allows us to optically extract the two-dimensional hole gas' spin polarization. By analyzing this polarization as a function of hole density and magnetic field, we observe a spin flip of the ferromagnet. Furthermore, the depolarization away from $ν=1$ accelerates close to the LL crossing. This is indicative of an increase in the size of Skyrmion excitations as the effective Zeeman energy vanishes at the LL crossing.
We analyze theoretically the novel pathway of ultrafast spin dynamics for ferromagnets with high enough single-ion anisotropy (non-Heisenberg ferromagnets). This longitudinal spin dynamics includes the coupled oscillations of the modulus of the magnetization together with the quadrupolar spin variables, which are expressed through quantum expectation values of operators bilinear on the spin components. Even for a simple single-element ferromagnet, such a dynamics can lead to an inertial magnetization reversal under the action of an ultrashort laser pulse.
We prove that any forms of electric current measurements within a gapped or gapless quantum system necessarily violate the time reversal symmetry (TRS). We then use the ionization energy theory to unequivocally show that the metallic surface states of a topological insulator consist of some special energy level crossings, not due to TRS induced Kramers degeneracy because there is a finite energy gap due to different wavefunctions. We use this special crossings and derive the electron-ion scattering rate required to explain the resistivity and carrier-type transition in (Bi1-xSbx)2Te3 and Pb1-x…
Identifying the time reversal symmetry of spins as a symplectic symmetry, we develop a large N approximation for quantum magnetism that embraces both antiferromagnetism and ferromagnetism. In SU(N), N>2, not all spins invert under time reversal, so we have introduced a new large N treatment which builds interactions exclusively out of the symplectic subgroup [SP(N)] of time reversing spins, a more stringent condition than the symplectic symmetry of previous SP(N) large N treatments. As a result, we obtain a mean field theory that incorporates the energy cost of frustrated bonds. When applied t…
In a low-disorder two-dimensional electron system, when two Landau levels of opposite spin or pseudospin cross at the Fermi level, the dominance of the exchange energy can lead to a ferromagnetic, quantum Hall ground state whose gap is determined by the exchange energy and has skyrmions as its excitations. This is normally achieved via applying either hydrostatic pressure or uniaxial strain. We study here a very high-quality, low-density, two-dimensional hole system, confined to a 30-nm-wide (001) GaAs quantum well, in which the two lowest-energy Landau levels can be gate tuned to cross at and…
Coulomb interactions famously drive three dimensional quadratic band crossing semimetals into a non-Fermi liquid phase of matter. In a previous work, Phys. Rev. B 95, 205106 (2017), the effect of disorder on this non-Fermi liquid phase was investigated, assuming that the bandstructure was isotropic, assuming that the conduction and valence bands had the same band mass, and assuming that the disorder preserved exact time-reversal symmetry and statistical isotropy. It was shown that the non-Fermi liquid fixed point is unstable to disorder, and that a runaway flow to strong disorder occurs. In th…
The spin polarization (SP) of the ferromagnet (FM) is a quantity of fundamental importance in spintronics. In this work, we propose a quasi-one-dimensional junction structure composed of a FM and a time-reversal invariant topological superconductor (TRITS) with un-spin-polarized pairing type to determine the SP of the FM. We find that due to the topological property of the TRITS, the zero-bias conductance (ZBC) of the FM/TRITS junction which is directly related to the SP is a non-quantized but topological quantity. The ZBC only depends on the parameters of the FM, it is independent of the inte…
We carefully study how the fermion-fermion interactions affect the low-energy states of a two-dimensional spin-$1/2$ fermionic system on the kagomé lattice with a quadratic band crossing point. With the help of the renormalization group approach, we can treat all kinds of fermionic interactions on the the same footing and then establish the coupled energy-dependent flows of fermionic interaction parameters via collecting one-loop corrections, from which a number of interesting results are extracted in the low-energy regime. At first, various sorts of fermion-fermion interactions furiously comp…
Manipulation of the spin-states of a quantum dot by purely electrical means is a highly desirable property of fundamental importance for the development of spintronic devices such as spin-filters, spin-transistors and single-spin memory as well as for solid-state qubits. An electrically gated quantum dot in the Coulomb blockade regime can be tuned to hold a single unpaired spin-1/2, which is routinely spin-polarized by an applied magnetic field. Using ferromagnetic electrodes, however, the properties of the quantum dot become directly spin-dependent and it has been demonstrated that the ferrom…
The large magnetic anisotropy in the layered ferromagnet Fe_{1/4}TaS_2 leads to very sharp reversals of the magnetization $\bf M$ at the coercive field. We have exploited this feature to measure the anomalous Hall effect (AHE), focussing on the AHE conductivity $σ^A_{xy}$ in the inelastic regime. At low temperature T (5-50 K), $σ^A_{xy}$ is T-independent, consistent with the Berry-phase/Karplus-Luttinger theory. Above 50 K, we extract an inelastic AHE conductivity $σ^{in}_{xy}$ that scales as the square of $Δρ$ (the T dependent part of the resistivity $ρ$). The term $σ^{in}_{xy}$ clarifies the…
Resistively Detected Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (RD-NMR) has been used to investigate a two-subband electron system in a regime where quantum Hall pseudo-spin ferromagnetic (QHPF) states are prominently developed. It reveals that the easy-axis QHPF state around the total filling factor $ν=4 $ can be detected by the RD-NMR measurement. Approaching one of the Landau level (LL) crossing points, the RD-NMR signal strength and the nuclear spin relaxation rate $1/T_{1}$ enhance significantly, a signature of low energy spin excitations. However, the RD-NMR signal at another identical LL crossing poin…
The thermal activation of magnetization reversal in magnetic nanoparticles is controlled by the anisotropy-energy barrier. Using perturbation theory, exact diagonalization and stability analysis of the ferromagnetic spin-s Heisenberg model with coupling or single-site anisotropy, we study the effects of quantum fluctuations on the height of the energy barrier. Opposed to the classical case, there is no critical anisotropy strength discriminating between reversal via coherent rotation and via nucleation/domain-wall propagation. Quantum fluctuations are seen to lower the barrier depending on the…
Crossing point phenomena are one of the interesting and still puzzling effects in strongly correlated electron systems. We have synthesized RuSr2Gd1.4Ce0.6Cu2O10-δ (GdRu-1222) magneto-superconductor through standard solid state reaction route and measured its magnetic, transport and thermal properties. We also synthesized RuSr2Eu1.4Ce0.6Cu2O10-δ (EuRu-1222) then measured its heat capacity in zero magnetic fields for reference. The studied compounds crystallized in tetragonal structure with space group I4/mmm. GdRu-1222 is a reported magneto-superconductor with Ru spins magnetic ordering at tem…
Chern insulator ferromagnets are characterized by a quantized anomalous Hall effect, and have so far been identified experimentally in magnetically-doped topological insulator (MTI) thin films and in bilayer graphene moir{é} superlattices. We classify Chern insulator ferromagnets as either spin or orbital, depending on whether the orbital magnetization results from spontaneous spin-polarization combined with spin-orbit interactions, as in the MTI case, or directly from spontaneous orbital currents, as in the moir{é} superlattice case. We argue that in a given magnetic state, characterized for …
Exchange bias effect is an important attribute in several device applications. Traditionally, it is discussed as a form of exchange anisotropy at the interface between the ferromagnetic/antiferromagnetic layers of two distinct systems. We report here on the magnetically ordered alloys possessing the feature of unidirectional anisotropy, which reverses its sign across a characteristic temperature. These are admixed rare earth intermetallics, comprising two dissimilar rare earth (RE) ions, belonging to the two different halves of the 4f-series and imbibing the notion of ferromagnetic coupling be…
The quantum anomalous Hall effect (QAHE) hosts the dissipationless chiral edge states associated with the nonzero Chern number, providing potentially significant applications in future spintronics. The QAHE usually occurs in a two-dimensional (2D) system with time-reversal symmetry breaking. In this work, we propose that the QAHE can exist in three-dimensional (3D) ferromagnetic insulators. By imposing inversion symmetry, we develop the topological constraints dictating the appearance of 3D QAHE based on the parity analysis at the time-reversal invariant points in reciprocal space. Moreover, u…
Electrons in moiré flat band systems can spontaneously break time reversal symmetry, giving rise to a quantized anomalous Hall effect. Here we use a superconducting quantum interference device to image stray magnetic fields in one such system composed of twisted bilayer graphene aligned to hexagonal boron nitride. We find a magnetization of several Bohr magnetons per charge carrier, demonstrating that the magnetism is primarily orbital in nature. Our measurements reveal a large change in the magnetization as the chemical potential is swept across the quantum anomalous Hall gap consistent with …
We study magnetization reversal of nanostructures of the itinerant ferromagnet SrRuO3 (Tc~150 K). We find that down to 10 K the magnetization reversal is dominated by thermal activation. From 2 - 10 K, the magnetization reversal becomes independent of temperature, raising the possibility for reversal dominated by macroscopic quantum tunneling (MQT). A 10 K crossover to MQT is consistent with the extremely large anisotropy field (~7 T) of SrRuO3.
