arXiv subjects

Jörg Schmalian

Publications and source records attributed to Jörg Schmalian.

At least 91 records · Page 5Linked to original sources

arXiv2018

Hierarchy of Information Scrambling, Thermalization, and Hydrodynamic Flow in Graphene

We determine the information scrambling rate $λ_{L}$ due to electron-electron Coulomb interaction in graphene. $λ_{L}$ characterizes the growth of chaos and has been argued to give information about the thermalization and hydrodynamic transport coefficients of a many-body system. We demonstrate that $λ_{L}$ behaves for strong coupling similar to transport and energy relaxation rates. A weak coupling analysis, however, reveals that scrambling is related to dephasing or single particle relaxation. Furthermore, $λ_{L}$ is found to be parametrically larger than the collision rate relevant for hydrodynamic processes, such as electrical conduction or viscous flow, and the rate of energy relaxation, relevant for thermalization. Thus, while scrambling is obviously necessary for thermalization and quantum transport, it does generically not set the time scale for these processes. In addition we derive a quantum kinetic theory for information scrambling that resembles the celebrated Boltzmann equation and offers a physically transparent insight into quantum chaos in many-body systems.

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arXiv2018

Out-of-bounds hydrodynamics in anisotropic Dirac fluids

We study the hydrodynamic behavior in two-dimensional, interacting electronic systems with merging Dirac points at charge neutrality. The dispersion along one crystallographic direction is Dirac-like, while it is Newtonian-like in the orthogonal direction. As a result, the electrical conductivity is metallic in one and insulating in the other direction. One element of the shear viscosity tensor violates the famous lower bound for the shear viscosity to entropy density ratio,an effect that can be probed via anisotropic thermal Hagen- Poiseuille flow.

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arXiv2018

Vestigial nematic order and superconductivity in the doped topological insulator Cu$_{x}$Bi$_{2}$Se$_{3}$

If the topological insulator Bi$_{2}$Se$_{3}$ is doped with electrons, superconductivity with $T_{\rm c}\approx3-4\:{\rm K}$ emerges for a low density of carriers ($n\approx10^{20}{\rm cm}^{-3}$) and with a small ratio of the superconducting coherence length and Fermi wave length: $ξ/λ_{F}\approx2\cdots4$. These values make fluctuations of the superconducting order parameter increasingly important, to the extend that the $T_{c}$-value is surprisingly large. Strong spin-orbit interaction led to the proposal of an odd-parity pairing state. This begs the question of the nature of the transition in an unconventional superconductor with strong pairing fluctuations. We show that for a multi-component order parameter, these fluctuations give rise to a nematic phase at $T_{\rm nem}>T_{c}$. Below $T_{c}$ several experiments demonstrated a rotational symmetry breaking where the Cooper pair wave function is locked to the lattice. Our theory shows that this rotational symmetry breaking, as vestige of the superconducting state, already occurs above $T_{c}$. The nematic phase is characterized by vanishing off-diagonal long range order, yet with anisotropic superconducting fluctuations. It can be identified through direction-dependent para-conductivity, lattice softening, and an enhanced Raman response in the $E_{g}$ symmetry channel. In addition, nematic order partially avoids the usual fluctuation suppression of $T_{c}$.

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arXiv2018

Orbital loop currents in iron-based superconductors

We show that the antiferromagnetic state commonly observed in the phase diagrams of the iron-based superconductors necessarily triggers loop currents characterized by charge transfer between different Fe $ 3d $ orbitals. This effect is rooted on the glide-plane symmetry of these materials and on the existence of an atomic spin-orbit coupling that couples states at the $X$ and $Y$ points of the 1-Fe Brillouin zone. In the particular case in which the magnetic moments are aligned parallel to the magnetic ordering vector direction which is the moment configuration most commonly found in the iron-based superconductors these loop currents involve the $d_{xy}$ orbital and either the $d_{yz}$ orbital (if the moments point along the $y$ axis) or the $d_{xz}$ orbitals (if the moments point along the $x$ axis). We show that the two main manifestations of the orbital loop currents are the emergence of magnetic moments in the pnictide/chalcogen site and an orbital-selective band splitting in the magnetically ordered state, both of which could be detected experimentally. Our results highlight the unique intertwining between orbital and spin degrees of freedom in the iron-based superconductors, and reveal the emergence of an unusual correlated phase that may impact the normal state and superconducting properties of these materials.

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arXiv2018

Intertwined vestigial order in quantum materials: nematicity and beyond

A hallmark of the phase diagrams of quantum materials is the existence of multiple electronic ordered states, which, in many cases, are not independent competing phases, but instead display a complex intertwinement. In this review, we focus on a particular realization of intertwined orders: a primary phase characterized by a multi-component order parameter and a fluctuation-driven vestigial phase characterized by a composite order parameter. This concept has been widely employed to elucidate nematicity in iron-based and cuprate superconductors. Here we present a group-theoretical framework that extends this notion to a variety of phases, providing a classification of vestigial orders of unconventional superconductors and density-waves. Electronic states with scalar and vector chiral order, spin-nematic order, Ising-nematic order, time-reversal symmetry-breaking order, and algebraic vestigial order emerge from one underlying principle. The formalism provides a framework to understand the complexity of quantum materials based on symmetry, largely without resorting to microscopic models.

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arXiv2017

Tracing the electronic pairing glue in unconventional superconductors via inelastic Scanning Tunneling Spectroscopy

The origin of Cooper pairing in high-temperature superconductors, such as the copper-oxide and iron-based system, is still under debate. High transition temperatures together with unconventional pairing states support the picture of an electronic pairing glue in the cuprates, where superconductivity is mediated by collective bosonic excitations of the electron fluid. In other materials, most importantly iron based systems with only hole or only electron pockets, the microscopic origin is hotly debated. Scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) has been shown to be a powerful experimental probe to detect electronic excitations and further allows to deduce some fingerprints of bosonic collective modes. Here, we demonstrate that the inclusion of inelastic tunnel events is crucial for the interpretation of tunneling spectra and allows to directly probe bosonic excitations via STM. We develop a model describing both the elastic tunneling current, which displays the electronic spectral function, and the inelastic current, that contains the information about the bosonic spectrum, in the superconducting state. Adopting this extended tunneling formalism we can naturally reproduce the tunneling spectra of various unconventional superconductors and trace the occurring features back to an opening of a spin gap in the superconducting state. More generally, our approach is a strong argument in favour of a collective mode mediating the pairing state in particular in iron-based systems. In particular, we conclude that the debated pairing mechanism in LiFeSe is also of electronic origin with sign-changing pairing symmetry.

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arXiv2017

Limits on dynamically generated spin-orbit coupling: Absence of $l=1$ Pomeranchuk instabilities in metals

An ordered state in the spin sector that breaks parity without breaking time-reversal symmetry, i.e., that can be considered as dynamically generated spin-orbit coupling, was proposed to explain puzzling observations in a range of different systems. Here we derive severe restrictions for such a state that follow from a Ward identity related to spin conservation. It is shown that $l=1$ spin-Pomeranchuk instabilities are not possible in non-relativistic systems since the response of spin-current fluctuations is entirely incoherent and non-singular. This rules out relativistic spin-orbit coupling as an emergent low-energy phenomenon. We illustrate the exotic physical properties of the remaining higher angular momentum analogues of spin-orbit coupling and derive a geometric constraint for spin-orbit vectors in lattice systems.

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arXiv2016

Strong coupling theory of heavy fermion criticality II

We present a theory of the scaling behavior of the thermodynamic, transport and dynamical properties of a three-dimensional metal governed by $d$-dimensional fluctuations at a quantum critical point, where the electron quasiparticle effective mass diverges. We determine how the critical bosonic order parameter fluctuations are affected by the effective mass divergence. The coupled system of fermions and bosons is found to be governed by two stable fixed points: the conventional weak-coupling fixed point and a new strong-coupling fixed point, provided the boson-boson interaction is irrelevant. The latter fixed point supports hyperscaling, characterized by fractional exponents. The theory is applied to the antiferromagnetic critical point in certain heavy fermion compounds, in which the strong-coupling regime is reached.

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arXiv2016

Dichotomy between in-plane magnetic susceptibility and resistivity anisotropies in extremely strained $BaFe_{2}As_{2}$

The in-plane resistivity and uniform magnetic susceptibility anisotropies of $BaFe_{2}As_{2}$ are obtained with a new method, in which a large symmetry-breaking uniaxial strain is applied using a substrate with a very anisotropic thermal expansion. The resistivity anisotropy and its corresponding elastoresistivity exhibit very similar diverging behavior as those obtained from piezo-stack experiments. This suggests that the resistivity anisotropy is more a direct measure of magnetism than of nematicity, since the nematic transition is no longer well-defined under a large strain. In strong contrast to the large resistivity anisotropy above $T_{N}$, the anisotropy of the in-plane magnetic susceptibility develops largely below $T_{N}$. Using an itinerant model, we show that the observed anisotropy ($χ_{b}>χ_{a}$) is determined by spin-orbit coupling and the orientation of the magnetic moments in the antiferromagnetic phase, and that the anisotropy is dominated by intra-orbital ($yz,yz$) contributions of the Umklapp susceptibility.

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arXiv2016

Selection rules for Cooper pairing in two-dimensional interfaces and sheets

Thin sheets deposited on a substrate and interfaces of correlated materials offer a plethora of routes towards the realization of exotic phases of matter. In these systems, inversion symmetry is broken which strongly affects the properties of possible instabilities -- in particular in the superconducting channel. By combining symmetry and energetic arguments, we derive general and experimentally accessible selection rules for Cooper instabilities in noncentrosymmetric systems which yield necessary and sufficient conditions for spontaneous time-reversal-symmetry breaking at the superconducting transition and constrain the orientation of the triplet vector. We discuss in detail the implications for various different materials. For instance, we conclude that the pairing state in thin layers of Sr$_2$RuO$_4$ must, as opposed to its bulk superconducting state, preserve time-reversal symmetry with its triplet vector being parallel to the plane of the system. All pairing states of this system allowed by the selection rules are predicted to display topological Majorana modes at dislocations or at the edge of the system. Applying our results to the LaAlO$_3$/SrTiO$_3$ heterostructures, we find that while the condensates of the (001) and (110) oriented interfaces must be time-reversal symmetric, spontaneous time-reversal-symmetry breaking can only occur for the less studied (111) interface. We also discuss the consequences for thin layers of URu$_2$Si$_2$ and UPt$_3$ as well as for single-layer FeSe. On a more general level, our considerations might serve as a design principle in the search for time-reversal-symmetry-breaking superconductivity in the absence of external magnetic fields.

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arXiv2016

Interference of quantum critical excitations and soft diffusive modes in a disordered antiferromagnetic metal

We study the temperature-dependent quantum correction to conductivity due to the interplay of spin density fluctuations and weak disorder for a two-dimensional metal near an antiferromagnetic (AFM) quantum critical point. AFM spin density fluctuations carry large momenta around the ordering vector $\mathbf{Q}$ and, at lowest order of the spin-fermion coupling, only scatter electrons between "hot spots" of the Fermi surface which are connected by $\mathbf{Q}$. Earlier, it was seen that the quantum interference between AFM spin density fluctuations and soft diffusive modes of the disordered metal is suppressed, a consequence of the large-momentum scattering. The suppression of this interference results in a non-singular temperature dependence of the corresponding interaction correction to conductivity. However, at higher order of the spin-fermion coupling, electrons on the entire Fermi surface can be scattered successively by two spin density fluctuations and, in total, suffer a small momentum transfer. This higher-order process can be described by composite modes which carry small momenta. We show that the interference between formally subleading composite modes and diffusive modes generates singular interaction corrections which ultimately dominate over the non-singular first-order correction at low temperatures. We derive an effective low-energy theory from the spin-fermion model which includes the above-mentioned higher-order process implicitly and show that for weak spin-fermion coupling the small-momentum transfer is mediated by a composite propagator. Employing the conventional diagrammatic approach to impurity scattering, we find the correction $δσ\sim +\ln^2 T$ for temperatures above an exponentially small crossover scale.

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arXiv2016

Coupling to real and virtual phonons in tunneling spectroscopy of superconductors

Fine structures in the tunneling spectra of superconductors have been widely used to identify fingerprints of the interaction responsible for Cooper pairing. Here we show that for scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) of Pb, the inclusion of inelastic tunneling processes is crucial for the proper interpretation of these fine structures. For STM the usual McMillan inversion algorithm of tunneling spectra must therefore be modified to include inelastic tunneling events, an insight that is crucial for the identification of the pairing glue in conventional and unconventional superconductors alike.

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arXiv2015

Disorder-promoted $C_4$-symmetric magnetic order in iron-based superconductors

In most iron-based superconductors, the transition to the magnetically ordered state is closely linked to a lowering of structural symmetry from tetragonal ($C_{4}$) to orthorhombic ($C_{2}$). However, recently, a regime of $C_{4}$-symmetric magnetic order has been reported in certain hole-doped iron-based superconductors. This novel magnetic ground state can be understood as a double-$\mathbf{Q}$ spin density wave characterized by two order parameters $\mathbf{M}_{1}$ and $\mathbf{M}_{2}$ related to each of the two $\mathbf{Q}$ vectors. Depending on the relative orientations of the order parameters, either a noncollinear spin-vortex crystal or a nonuniform charge-spin density wave could form. Experimentally, Mössbauer spectroscopy, neutron scattering, and muon spin rotation established the latter as the magnetic configuration of some of these optimally hole-doped iron-based superconductors. Theoretically, low-energy itinerant models do support a transition from single-$\mathbf{Q}$ to double-$\mathbf{Q}$ magnetic order, but with nearly-degenerate spin-vortex crystal and charge-spin density wave states. In fact, extensions of these low-energy models including additional electronic interactions tip the balance in favor of the spin-vortex crystal, in apparent contradiction with the recent experimental findings. In this paper, we revisit the phase diagram of magnetic ground states of low-energy multi-band models in the presence of weak disorder. We show that impurity scattering not only promotes the transition from $C_{2}$ to $C_{4}$-magnetic order, but it also favors the charge-spin density wave over the spin-vortex crystal phase. Additionally, in the single-$\mathbf{Q}$ phase, our analysis of the nematic coupling constant in the presence of disorder supports the experimental finding that the splitting between the structural and stripe-magnetic transition is enhanced by disorder.

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arXiv2015

Origin of the DC and AC conductivity anisotropy in iron-based superconductors: scattering rate versus spectral weight effects

To shed light on the mechanism responsible for the in-plane resistivity anisotropy in the nematic phase of the iron-based superconductors, we investigate the impact of spin fluctuations on the anisotropic AC conductivity. On the one hand, the scattering of electrons off magnetic fluctuations causes an anisotropic scattering rate. On the other hand, the accompanying Fermi velocity renormalization contributes to both the plasma frequency and the scattering rate in antagonistic ways, giving rise to anisotropies in these quantities that exactly cancel each other in the DC limit. As a result, the effective scattering rate changes its sign as function of temperature, but the DC conductivity retains the same sign, in agreement with recent experiments.

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arXiv2015

Universal collisionless transport of graphene

The impact of the electron-electron Coulomb interaction on the optical conductivity of graphene has led to a controversy that calls into question the universality of collisionless transport in this and other Dirac materials. Using a lattice calculation that avoids divergences present in previous nodal Dirac approaches, our work settles this controversy and obtains results in quantitative agreement with experiment over a wide frequency range. We also demonstrate that dimensional regularization methods agree, as long as the scaling properties of the conductivity and the regularization of the theory in modified dimension are correctly implemented. Tight-binding lattice and nodal Dirac theory calculations are shown to coincide at low energies even when the non-zero size of the atomic orbital wave function is included, conclusively demonstrating the universality of the optical conductivity of graphene.

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arXiv2015

Charge doping versus impurity scattering in chemically substituted iron-pnictides

To reveal the relative importance of charge doping and defect scattering in substitutionally modified 122 iron pnictides, we perform a systematic first principles study on selected bands at the Fermi level. Disorder effects are induced by various substitutions using an orbital based coherent potential approximation (CPA). Pronounced level shifts of individual bands suggest that transition metal substitutions introduce mobile charge carriers into the system. However, important deviations from such a rigid band scenario as well as spectral broadenings due to impurity scattering correlate with the band character. Finally a $T$-matrix analysis exhibits a larger intraband than interband scattering consistent with an $s^{+-}$ pairing state. Comparing different substitutions reveals an increase of pair-breaking along the transition metal series.

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arXiv2015

Emergent non-Fermi liquid at the quantum critical point of a topological phase transition in two dimensions

We study the effects of Coulomb interaction between 2D Weyl fermions with anisotropic dispersion which displays relativistic dynamics along one direction and Newtonian dynamics along the other. Such a dispersion can be realized in phosphorene under electric field or strain, in TiO$_2$/VO$_2$ superlattices, and, more generally, at the quantum critical point between a nodal semimetal and an insulator in systems with a chiral symmetry. Using the one-loop renormalization group approach in combination with the large-$N$ expansion, we find that the system displays interaction-driven non-Fermi liquid behavior in a wide range of intermediate frequencies and marginal Fermi liquid behavior at the smallest frequencies. In the non-Fermi liquid regime, the quasiparticle residue $Z$ at energy $E$ scales as $Z \propto E^a$ with $a >0$, and the parameters of the fermionic dispersion acquire anomalous dimensions. In the marginal Fermi-liquid regime, $Z \propto (|\log E|)^{-b}$ with universal $b = 3/2$.

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arXiv2015

Universal post-quench coarsening and quantum aging at a quantum critical point

The non-equilibrium dynamics of a system that is located in the vicinity of a quantum critical point is affected by the critical slowing down of order-parameter correlations with the potential for novel out-of-equilibrium universality. After a quantum quench, i.e. a sudden change of a parameter in the Hamiltonian such a system is expected to almost instantly fall out of equilibrium and undergo aging dynamics, i.e. dynamics that depends on the time passed since the quench. Investigating the quantum dynamics of a $N$-component $φ^{4}$-model coupled to an external bath, we determine this universal aging and demonstrate that the system undergoes a coarsening, governed by a critical exponent that is unrelated to the equilibrium exponents of the system. We analyze this behavior in the large-$N$ limit, which is complementary to our earlier renormalization group analysis, allowing in particular the direct investigation of the order-parameter dynamics in the symmetry broken phase and at the upper critical dimension. By connecting the long time limit of fluctuations and response, we introduce a distribution function that shows that the system remains non-thermal and exhibits quantum coherence even on long timescales.

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