The hydrodynamic Drude model (HDM) has been successful in describing the optical properties of metallic nanostructures, but for semiconductors where several different kinds of charge carriers are present an extended theory is required. We present a two-fluid hydrodynamic model for semiconductors containing electrons and holes (from thermal or external excitation) or light and heavy holes (in $p$-doped materials). The two-fluid model predicts the existence of two longitudinal modes, an acoustic and an optical, whereas only an optical mode is present in the HDM. By extending nonlocal Mie theory to two plasmas, we are able to simulate the optical properties of two-fluid nanospheres and predict that the acoustic mode gives rise to peaks in the extinction spectra that are absent in the HDM.

An idea of employing the Landau-Zener-Stückelberg-Majorana dynamics to flip a spin of a single ground state hole is introduced and explored by a time-dependent simulation. This configuration interaction study considers a hole confined in a quantum molecule formed in an InSb $\langle 111\rangle$ quantum wire by application of an electrostatic potential. An up-down spin-mixing avoided crossing is formed by nonaxial terms in the Kohn-Luttinger Hamiltonian and the Dresselhaus spin-orbit one. Manipulation of the system is possible by the dynamic change of an external vertical electric field, which enables the consecutive driving of the hole through two anticrossings. Moreover, a simple model of the power-law-type noise that impedes precise electric control of the system is included in the form of random telegraph noise to estimate the limitations of the working conditions. We show that in principle the process is possible, but it requires precise control of the parameters of the driving impulse.

This paper is motivated by an unexpected observation in a recent experiment [S. Tewari et al., Phys. Rev. B 93, 035420 (2016).], where a robust coherence recovery, starting from a certain energy, was detected for an electron injected into a quantum Hall edge at a filling factor of 2. After passing through a quantum dot, the electron then tunnels into the edge with a subsequent propagation towards a symmetric Mach-Zender interferometer (MZI). Afterwards, the visibility of Aharonov-Bohm (AB) oscillations is measured. An earlier study, based on the bosonization framework with a linear spectrum of the edge excitations, predicted a decay of the visibility with increasing energy. We associate this result with the destructive interference of the two quasiparticles (charge and neutral modes), formed at the edge out of the incoming electron wave packet (WP). However, in reality, it might be suppressed due to an imbalance between the quasiparticles, for instance, in the presence of dispersion and/or dissipation. This idea could also be explored further experimentally by applying a periodic potential to the arms of the MZI and thus creating the imbalance. Yet another possibility to restore phase coherence, also based on dispersion and dissipation, accounts for a drop in the energy density of the electron WP by the time it arrives at the interferometer, leading to a significantly smaller dephasing inside it. We then show that the energy density is defined by a parameter completely independent of the injected energy, which naturally explains the emergence of threshold energy in the experiment.

We investigate the transient electronic structure of ${\mathrm{BaFe}}_2{\mathrm{As}}_2$, a parent compound of iron-based superconductors, by time- and angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy. In order to probe the entire Brillouin zone, we utilize extreme ultraviolet photons and observe photoemission intensity oscillation with the frequency of the $A_{1g}$ phonon which is antiphase between the zone-centered hole Fermi surfaces (FSs) and zone-cornered electron FSs. We attribute the antiphase behavior to the warping in one of the zone-centered hole FSs accompanying the displacement of the pnictogen height and find that this displacement is the same direction as that induced by substitution of P for As, where superconductivity is induced by a structural modification without carrier doping in this system.

The presence of the quantum anomalous Hall effect in a V-doped topological insulator (TI) has not yet been understood from band-structure studies. Here, we demonstrate the importance of including the correlation effect in density-functional-theory (DFT) calculations, in the format as simple as the Hubbard $U$, for the determination of the topological properties of these materials. Our results show that the correlation effect turns a V-doped TI thin film into a Mott insulator and facilitates it entering the quantum anomalous Hall phase. Even the ferromagnetic ordering is also strongly affected by the inclusion of the $U$ term. This work satisfactorily explains recent experimental observations and highlights the essentialness of having the Coulomb correlation effect in DFT studies of magnetic TIs.

The Dirac surface states of topological insulators offer a unique possibility for creating spin polarized charge currents due to the spin-momentum locking. Here we demonstrate that the control over the bulk and surface contribution is crucial to maximize the charge-to-spin conversion efficiency. We observe an enhancement of the spin signal due to surface-dominated spin polarization while freezing out the bulk conductivity in semiconducting ${\mathrm{Bi}}_{1.5}{\mathrm{Sb}}_{0.5}{\mathrm{Te}}_{1.7}{\mathrm{Se}}_{1.3}$ below $100\mathrm{K}$. Detailed measurements up to room temperature exhibit a strong reduction of the magnetoresistance signal between $2\text{and}100\mathrm{K}$, which we attribute to the thermal excitation of bulk carriers and to the electron-phonon coupling in the surface states. The presence and dominance of this effect up to room temperature is promising for spintronic science and technology.

We investigate the dynamics of a two-dimensional electron gas (2DEG) under circular polarized microwave radiation in the presence of dilute localized impurities. Inspired by recent developments on Floquet topological insulators we obtain the Floquet wave functions of this system which allow us to predict the microwave absorption and charge density responses of the electron gas; we demonstrate how these properties can be understood from the underlying semiclassical dynamics even for impurities with a size of around a magnetic length. The charge density response takes the form of a rotating charge density vortex around the impurity that can lead to a significant renormalization of the external microwave field which becomes strongly inhomogeneous on the scale of a cyclotron radius around the impurity. We show that this inhomogeneity can suppress the circular polarization dependence which is theoretically expected for microwave induced resistance oscillations but which was not observed in experiments on semiconducting 2DEGs. Our explanation for this so far unexplained polarization independence has close similarities with the Azbel'-Kaner effect in metals where the interaction length between the microwave field and conduction electrons is much smaller than the cyclotron radius due to skin effect generating harmonics of the cyclotron resonance.

The magnetic phase diagram of ${\mathrm{CuCrO}}_2$ was studied with an alternative method of simultaneous Cu NMR and electric polarization techniques with the primary goal of demonstrating that, regardless of cooling history of the sample, the magnetic phase with specific helmet-shaped NMR spectra associated with interplanar disorder possesses electric polarization. Our result unequivocally confirms the assumption of Sakhratov et al. [Phys. Rev. B 94, 094410 (2016)] that the high-field low-temperature phase is in fact a three-dimensional (3D) polar phase characterized by a 3D magnetic order with tensor order parameter. In comparison with the results obtained in pulsed fields, a modified phase diagram is introduced defining the upper boundary of the first-order transition from the 3D spiral to the 3D polar phase.

Resonant ultrasound spectroscopy and magnetic susceptibility experiments have been used to characterize strain coupling phenomena associated with structural and magnetic properties of the shape-memory Heusler alloy series ${\mathrm{Ni}}_{50+x}{\mathrm{Mn}}_{25-x}{\mathrm{Ga}}_{25}$ ($x=0$, 2.5, 5.0, and 7.5). All samples exhibit a martensitic transformation at temperature $T_M$ and ferromagnetic ordering at temperature $T_C$, while the pure end member ($x=0$) also has a premartensitic transition at $T_{PM}$, giving four different scenarios: $T_C>T_{PM}>T_M,T_C>T_M$ without premartensitic transition, $T_C\approx T_M$, and $T_C<T_M$. Fundamental differences in elastic properties, i.e., stiffening versus softening, are explained in terms of coupling of shear strains with three discrete order parameters relating to magnetic ordering, a soft mode, and the electronic instability responsible for the large strains typical of martensitic transitions. Linear-quadratic or biquadratic coupling between these order parameters, either directly or indirectly via the common strains, is then used to explain the stabilities of the different structures. Acoustic losses are attributed to critical slowing down at the premartensite transition, to the mobility of interphases between coexisting phases at the martensitic transition, and to mobility of some aspect of the twin walls under applied stress down to the lowest temperatures at which measurements were made.

The superconductivity in the rare-earth transition-metal ternary borides $R{\mathrm{RuB}}_2$ (where $R=\text{Lu}$ and Y) has been investigated using muon-spin rotation and relaxation. Measurements made in zero field suggest that time-reversal symmetry is preserved upon entering the superconducting state in both materials; a small difference in depolarization is observed above and below the superconducting transition in both compounds, however, this has been attributed to quasistatic magnetic fluctuations. Transverse-field measurements of the flux-line lattice indicate that the superconductivity in both materials is fully gapped, with a conventional $s$-wave pairing symmetry and BCS-like magnitudes for the zero-temperature gap energies. The electronic properties of the charge carriers in the superconducting state have been calculated, with effective masses $m^{*}/m_{\mathrm{e}}=9.8\pm 0.1$ and $15.0\pm 0.1$ in the Lu and Y compounds, respectively, with superconducting carrier densities $n_{\mathrm{s}}=\left(2.73\pm 0.04\right)\times {10}^{28}{\mathrm{m}}^{-3}$ and $\left(2.17\pm 0.02\right)\times {10}^{28}{\mathrm{m}}^{-3}$. The materials have been classified according to the Uemura scheme for superconductivity, with values for $T_{\mathrm{c}}/T_{\mathrm{F}}$ of $1/(414\pm 6)$ and $1/(304\pm 3)$, implying that the superconductivity may not be entirely conventional in nature.

In metallic ferromagnets, the interaction between local magnetic moments and conduction electrons renormalizes parameters of the Landau-Lifshitz-Gilbert equation, such as the gyromagnetic ratio and the Gilbert damping, and makes them dependent on the magnetic configurations. Although the effects of the renormalization for nonchiral ferromagnets are usually minor and hardly detectable, we show that the renormalization does play a crucial role for chiral magnets. Here the renormalization is chiral, and as such we predict experimentally identifiable effects on the phenomenology of magnetization dynamics. In particular, our theory for the self-consistent magnetization dynamics of chiral magnets allows for a concise interpretation of domain-wall creep motion. We also argue that the conventional creep theory of the domain-wall motion, which assumes Markovian dynamics, needs critical reexamination since the gyromagnetic ratio makes the motion non-Markovian. The non-Markovian nature of the domain-wall dynamics is experimentally checkable by the chirality of the renormalization.

We report measurements of the third order, ${\chi }_3$, and fifth order, ${\chi }_5$, susceptibilities in an itinerant oxide metamagnet, ${\mathrm{Sr}}_3{\mathrm{Ru}}_2{\mathrm{O}}_7$, for magnetic fields both parallel and perpendicular to the $c$ axis. These susceptibilities exhibit maxima in their temperature dependence such that $T_1\approx 2T_3\approx 4T_5$ where $T_i$ is the position in temperature where a peak in the $i\mathrm{th}-\mathrm{order}$ susceptibility occurs. These features taken together with the scaling of the critical field with the temperature $T_1$ observed in a diverse variety of itinerant metamagnets find a natural explanation in a single-band model with one Van Hove singularity (VHS) and on-site repulsion $U$. The separation of the VHS from the Fermi energy $\mathrm{\Delta }$, sets a single energy scale, which is the primary driver for the observed features of itinerant metamagnetism at low temperatures.

We report the synthesis and characterization of the novel silicide LaFeSiH displaying superconductivity with onset at 11 K. We find that this pnictogen-free compound is isostructural to LaFeAsO, with a similar low-temperature tetragonal to orthorhombic distortion. Using density functional theory we show that this system is also a multiband metal in which the orthorhombic distortion is likely related to single-stripe antiferromagnetic order. Electrical resistivity and magnetic susceptibility measurements reveal that these features occur side by side with superconductivity, which is suppressed by external pressure.

We have investigated the superconducting state of the noncentrosymmetric superconductor ${\mathrm{Re}}_6\mathrm{Ti}$ ($T_c=6.0$ K) using a muon-spin rotation/relaxation technique. The zero-field muon experiment shows the presence of spontaneous magnetic fields in the superconducting state, indicating time-reversal symmetry breaking (TRSB). However, the low-temperature transverse-field muon measurements suggest nodeless $s$-wave superconductivity. Similar results were also observed for ${\mathrm{Re}}_{6}X$ ($X=\text{Zr}$, Hf) family of materials which indicates that the pairing symmetry does not depend on the spin-orbital coupling. Altogether, these studies suggest an unconventional nature (TRSB) of superconductivity is intrinsic to the ${\mathrm{Re}}_{6}X$ family of compounds and paves the way for further studies of this family of materials.

It is well known that plastic deformation is a highly nonlinear dissipative irreversible phenomenon of considerable complexity. As a consequence, little progress has been made in modeling some well-known size-dependent properties of plastic deformation, for instance, calculating hardness as a function of indentation depth independently. Here, we devise a method of calculating hardness by calculating the residual indentation depth and then calculate the hardness as the ratio of the load to the residual imprint area. Recognizing the fact that dislocations are the basic defects controlling the plastic component of the indentation depth, we set up a system of coupled nonlinear time evolution equations for the mobile, forest, and geometrically necessary dislocation densities. Within our approach, we consider the geometrically necessary dislocations to be immobile since they contribute to additional hardness. The model includes dislocation multiplication, storage, and recovery mechanisms. The growth of the geometrically necessary dislocation density is controlled by the number of loops that can be activated under the contact area and the mean strain gradient. The equations are then coupled to the load rate equation. Our approach has the ability to adopt experimental parameters such as the indentation rates, the geometrical parameters defining the Berkovich indenter, including the nominal tip radius. The residual indentation depth is obtained by integrating the Orowan expression for the plastic strain rate, which is then used to calculate the hardness. Consistent with the experimental observations, the increasing hardness with decreasing indentation depth in our model arises from limited dislocation sources at small indentation depths and therefore avoids divergence in the limit of small depths reported in the Nix-Gao model. We demonstrate that for a range of parameter values that physically represent different materials, the model predicts the three characteristic features of hardness, namely, increase in the hardness with decreasing indentation depth, and the linear relation between the square of the hardness and the inverse of the indentation depth, for all but 150 nm, deviating for smaller depths. In addition, we also show that it is straightforward to obtain optimized parameter values that give good fit to the hardness data for polycrystalline cold worked copper and single crystals of silver.

Quantum anomalous Hall insulator/superconductor heterostructures emerged as a competitive platform to realize topological superconductors with chiral Majorana edge states as shown in recent experiments [He et al. Science 357, 294 (2017)]. However, chiral Majorana modes, being extended, cannot be used for topological quantum computation. In this work, we show that quasi-one-dimensional quantum anomalous Hall structures exhibit a large topological regime (much larger than the two-dimensional case) which supports localized Majorana zero energy modes. The non-Abelian properties of a cross-shaped quantum anomalous Hall junction is shown explicitly by time-dependent calculations. We believe that the proposed quasi-one-dimensional quantum anomalous Hall structures can be easily fabricated for scalable topological quantum computation.

Unraveling the nature of the doping-induced transition between a Mott insulator and a weakly correlated metal is crucial to understanding novel emergent phases in strongly correlated materials. For this purpose, we study the evolution of spectral properties upon doping Mott insulating states by utilizing the cluster perturbation theory on the Hubbard and $t–J$-like models. Specifically, a quasifree dispersion crossing the Fermi level develops with small doping, and it eventually evolves into the most dominant feature at high doping levels. Although this dispersion is related to the free-electron hopping, our study shows that this spectral feature is, in fact, influenced inherently by both electron-electron correlation and spin-exchange interaction: the correlation destroys coherence, while the coupling between spin and mobile charge restores it in the photoemission spectrum. Due to the persistent impact of correlations and spin physics, the onset of gaps or the high-energy anomaly in the spectral functions can be expected in doped Mott insulators.