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Evidence for nesting-driven charge density wave instabilities in the quasi-two-dimensional material LaAgSb2

Alexeï Bosak1,*, Sofia-Michaela Souliou2,1, Clément Faugeras3, Rolf Heid2, Maciej R. Molas3,4, Rong-Yan Chen5, Nan-Lin Wang6, Marek Potemski3,4, and Matthieu Le Tacon2,*

  • 1European Synchrotron Radiation Facility, 71 Avenue de Martyrs, 38043 Grenoble, France
  • 2Institute for Quantum Materials and Technologies, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, 76131 Karlsruhe, Germany
  • 3Laboratoire National des Champs Magnétiques Intenses, Université Grenoble Alpes, CNRS-UPS-INSA-EMFL, 25 Avenue des Martyrs, 38042 Grenoble, France
  • 4Faculty of Physics, University of Warsaw, ulica Pasteura 5, 02-093 Warsaw, Poland
  • 5Department of Physics, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China
  • 6International Center for Quantum Materials, School of Physics, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China

  • *Corresponding authors: bosak@esrf.fr; matthieu.letacon@kit.edu
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Phys. Rev. Research 3, 033020 – Published 6 July, 2021

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevResearch.3.033020

Abstract

Since their theoretical prediction by Peierls in the 1930s, charge density waves (CDWs have been one of the most commonly encountered electronic phases in low-dimensional metallic systems. The instability mechanism originally proposed combines Fermi surface nesting and electron-phonon coupling but is, strictly speaking, only valid in one dimension. In higher dimensions, its relevance is questionable as sharp maxima in the static electronic susceptibility χ(q) are smeared out, and is, in many cases, unable to account for the periodicity of the observed charge modulations. Here, we investigate the quasi-two-dimensional LaAgSb2, which exhibits two CDW transitions, by a combination of diffuse x-ray scattering, inelastic x-ray scattering, and ab initio calculations. We demonstrate that the CDW formation is driven by phonon softening. The corresponding Kohn anomalies are visualized in three dimensions through the momentum distribution of the x-ray diffuse scattering intensity. We show that they can be quantitatively accounted for by considering the electronic susceptibility calculated from a Dirac-like band, weighted by anisotropic electron-phonon coupling. This remarkable agreement sheds new light on the importance of Fermi surface nesting in CDW formation.

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Phys. Rev. Research 3, 033020– Published 6 July, 2021
  • Received 8 January 2021
  • Revised 29 April 2021
  • Accepted 14 May 2021
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Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI.

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