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Kai Liu

Publications and source records attributed to Kai Liu.

At least 307 records · Page 17Linked to original sources
arXiv2022

Manipulation of Dirac band curvature and momentum-dependent g-factor in a kagome magnet YMn6Sn6

The Zeeman effect describes the energy change of an atomic quantum state in magnetic field. The magnitude and the direction of this change depend on the dimensionless Lande g-factor. In quantum solids, the response of the Bloch electron states to the magnetic field also exhibits the Zeeman effect with an effective g-factor that was theoretically predicted to be dependent on the momentum. While typically negligible in many ordinary solids, the momentum-dependent variation of the g-factor is theorized to be substantially enhanced in many topological and magnetic systems. However, the momentum-dependence of the g-factor is notoriously difficult to extract and it is yet to be directly experimentally measured. In this work, we report the experimental discovery of a strongly momentum-dependent g-factor in a kagome magnet YMn6Sn6. Using spectroscopic-imaging scanning tunneling microscopy, we map the evolution of a massive Dirac band in the vicinity of the Fermi level as a function of magnetic field. We find that electronic states at different lattice momenta exhibit markedly different Zeeman energy shifts, giving rise to an anomalous g-factor that peaks around the Dirac point. Our work provides the first momentum-resolved visualization of Dirac band curvature manipulation by magnetic field, which should in principle be highly relevant to other topological kagome magnets.

cond-mat.str-el↗
arXiv2022

Joint CNN and Transformer Network via weakly supervised Learning for efficient crowd counting

Currently, for crowd counting, the fully supervised methods via density map estimation are the mainstream research directions. However, such methods need location-level annotation of persons in an image, which is time-consuming and laborious. Therefore, the weakly supervised method just relying upon the count-level annotation is urgently needed. Since CNN is not suitable for modeling the global context and the interactions between image patches, crowd counting with weakly supervised learning via CNN generally can not show good performance. The weakly supervised model via Transformer was sequentially proposed to model the global context and learn contrast features. However, the transformer directly partitions the crowd images into a series of tokens, which may not be a good choice due to each pedestrian being an independent individual, and the parameter number of the network is very large. Hence, we propose a Joint CNN and Transformer Network (JCTNet) via weakly supervised learning for crowd counting in this paper. JCTNet consists of three parts: CNN feature extraction module (CFM), Transformer feature extraction module (TFM), and counting regression module (CRM). In particular, the CFM extracts crowd semantic information features, then sends their patch partitions to TRM for modeling global context, and CRM is used to predict the number of people. Extensive experiments and visualizations demonstrate that JCTNet can effectively focus on the crowd regions and obtain superior weakly supervised counting performance on five mainstream datasets. The number of parameters of the model can be reduced by about 67%~73% compared with the pure Transformer works. We also tried to explain the phenomenon that a model constrained only by count-level annotations can still focus on the crowd regions. We believe our work can promote further research in this field.

cs.CV↗
arXiv2022

Heteroepitaxy of Large-Area, Monocrystalline Lead Halide Perovskite Films on Gallium Arsenide

Lead halide perovskite materials have been emerging as promising candidates for high-performance optoelectronic devices. Significant efforts have sought to realize monocrystalline perovskite films at a large scale. Here, we epitaxially grow monocrystalline methylammonium lead tribromide (MAPbBr3) films on lattice-matched gallium arsenide (GaAs) substrates at a centimeter scale. In particular, a solution-processed lead(II) sulfide (PbS) layer provides a lattice-matched and chemical protective interface for the solid-gas reaction to form MAPbBr3 films on GaAs. Structure characterizations identify the crystal orientations in the trilayer MAPbBr3/PbS/GaAs epi-structure and confirm the monocrystalline nature of MAPbBr3 on PbS/GaAs. The dynamic evolution of surface morphologies during the growth indicates a two-step epitaxial process. These fundamental understandings and practical growth techniques offer a viable guideline to approach high-quality perovskite films for previously inaccessible applications.

physics.app-ph↗
arXiv2022

Improving Adversarial Waveform Generation based Singing Voice Conversion with Harmonic Signals

Adversarial waveform generation has been a popular approach as the backend of singing voice conversion (SVC) to generate high-quality singing audio. However, the instability of GAN also leads to other problems, such as pitch jitters and U/V errors. It affects the smoothness and continuity of harmonics, hence degrades the conversion quality seriously. This paper proposes to feed harmonic signals to the SVC model in advance to enhance audio generation. We extract the sine excitation from the pitch, and filter it with a linear time-varying (LTV) filter estimated by a neural network. Both these two harmonic signals are adopted as the inputs to generate the singing waveform. In our experiments, two mainstream models, MelGAN and ParallelWaveGAN, are investigated to validate the effectiveness of the proposed approach. We conduct a MOS test on clean and noisy test sets. The result shows that both signals significantly improve SVC in fidelity and timbre similarity. Besides, the case analysis further validates that this method enhances the smoothness and continuity of harmonics in the generated audio, and the filtered excitation better matches the target audio.

cs.SD↗
arXiv2022

Exploring Native Atomic Defects in NiTe2

Nickel ditelluride (NiTe2), a new discovered type-II Dirac semimetal whose Dirac node lies close to its Fermi level, is expected to exhibit exotic phenomena including Lifshitz transition and superconductivity. As we know, defects are inevitable for transition metal dichalcogenides and have significant impacts on the optical and electronic properties. However, the systematic study of defects in NiTe2 is still lack. Here, by using high-resolution scanning tunneling microscopy combined with first-principles calculations, the point defects including the vacancy, intercalation and antisite defects in NiTe2 are systematically investigated. We identified five main types native defects and revealed that the growth condition could affect the type of native defects. By controlling the ratio of ingredient during synthesis, the types of point defects are expected to be manipulated, especially antisite defects. Additionally, we find native defects could slightly dope the topological surface states. Our results provide a facile way to manipulate defects for future optimizing the electronic properties of NiTe2 and other related materials.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗
arXiv2021

Phase-dependent epitaxy for antimonene growth on silver substrate

Antimonene is a novel two-dimensional topological semiconductor material with strain driven tunable electronic structure for future electronic and spintronic devices, but the growth of clean antimonene is not fully understood. In this work, the growth process of antimonene on silver substrate has been studied in detail by using density functional theory and particle swarm optimization algorithms. The results show that, in addition to the experimental reported flat honeycomb and $β$-phase antimonene, $α$-phase antimonene was observed to be able to grow on thus substrates, and the phases of antimonene were deeply dependent on the reconstructed supercells and surface alloys. It has been demonstrated that the surface alloys on substrate play an active role in the growth of antimonene.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗
arXiv2021

Spherical Matrix Factorization

Matrix Factorization plays an important role in machine learning such as Non-negative Matrix Factorization, Principal Component Analysis, Dictionary Learning, etc. However, most of the studies aim to minimize the loss by measuring the Euclidean distance, though in some fields, angle distance is known to be more important and critical for analysis. In this paper, we propose a method by adding constraints on factors to unify the Euclidean and angle distance. However, due to non-convexity of the objective and constraints, the optimized solution is not easy to obtain. In this paper we propose a general framework to systematically solve it with provable convergence guarantee with various constraints.

cs.LG↗
arXiv2021

Pressure induced superconductivity in WB2 and ReB2 through modifying the B layers

The recent discovery of superconductivity up to 32 K in the pressurized MoB2 reignites the interests in exploring high-Tc superconductors in transition-metal diborides. Inspired by that work, we turn our attention to the 5d transition-metal diborides. Here we systematically investigate the responses of both structural and physical properties of WB2 and ReB2 to external pressure, which possess different types of boron layers. Similar to MoB2, the pressure-induced superconductivity was also observed in WB2 above 60 GPa with a maximum Tc of 15 K at 100 GPa, while no superconductivity was detected in ReB2 in this pressure range. Interestingly, the structures at ambient pressure for both WB2 and ReB2 persist to high pressure without structural phase transitions. Theoretical calculations suggest that the ratio of flat boron layers in this class of transition-metal diborides may be crucial for the appearance of high Tc. The combined theoretical and experimental results highlight the effect of geometry of boron layers on superconductivity and shed light on the exploration of novel high-Tc superconductors in borides.

cond-mat.supr-con↗
arXiv2021

Intrinsic ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic axion insulators in van der Waals materials Mn\emph{X}$_{2}$\emph{B}$_{2}$\emph{T}$_{6}$ family

The MnBi$_{2}$Te$_{4}$ family has attracted significant attention due to its rich topological states such as the quantum anomalous Hall (QAH) insulator state, the axion insulator state, and the magnetic Weyl semimetal state. Nevertheless, the intrinsic antiferromagnetic (AFM) interlayer coupling in MnBi$_{2}$Te$_{4}$ partly hinders the realization of "high-temperature" QAH effect. Here, by using first-principles electronic structure calculations, we design a new class of materials Mn\emph{X}$_{2}$\emph{B}$_{2}$\emph{T}$_{6}$ (\emph{X}=Ge, Sn, or Pb; \emph{B}=Sb or Bi; \emph{T}=Se or Te) based on the \emph{X}$_{2}$\emph{B}$_{2}$\emph{T}$_{5}$ structures rather than the Bi$_{2}$Te$_{3}$ family. We find that each septuple-layer Mn\emph{B}$_{2}$\emph{T}$_{4}$ is sandwiched by two [\emph{X}\emph{T}] layers, which may turn the AFM interlayer coupling into a ferromagnetic (FM) coupling. The calculations specifically demonstrate that \emph{MnGe}$_{2}$\emph{Sb}$_{2}$\emph{Te}$_{6}$, \emph{MnGe}$_{2}$\emph{Bi}$_{2}$\emph{Te}$_{6}$, and \emph{MnPb}$_{2}$\emph{Bi}$_{2}$\emph{Te}$_{6}$ are FM axion insulators, while MnGe$_{2}$Sb$_{2}$Se$_{6}$, MnGe$_{2}$Bi$_{2}$Se$_{6}$, MnSn$_{2}$Sb$_{2}$Te$_{6}$, and MnSn$_{2}$Bi$_{2}$Te$_{6}$ are A-type AFM axion insulators. These seven materials all have an out-of-plane easy axis of magnetization. The Mn\emph{X}$_{2}$\emph{B}$_{2}$\emph{T}$_{6}$ family thus offers a promising platform beyond the MnBi$_{2}$Te$_{4}$ family for the realization of quantized magnetoelectric effect and "high-temperature" QAH effect in future experiments.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗
arXiv2021

Quantum transport evidence of topological band structures of kagome superconductor CsV3Sb5

We report the transport properties of kagome superconductor CsV$_{3}$Sb$_{5}$ single crystals at magnetic field up to 32 T. The Shubnikov de Haas (SdH) oscillations emerge at low temperature and four frequencies of $F_α=$ 27 T, $F_β=$ 73 T, $F_ε=$ 727 T, and $F_η=$ 786 T with relatively small cyclotron masses are observed. For $F_β$ and $F_ε$, the Berry phases are close to $π$, providing a clear evidence of nontrivial topological band structures of CsV$_{3}$Sb$_{5}$. Furthermore, the consistence between theoretical calculations and experimental results implies that these frequencies can be assigned to the Fermi surfaces locating near the boundary of Brillouin zone and confirms that the structure with an inverse Star of David distortion could be the most stable structure at charge density wave state. These results will shed light on the nature of correlated topological physics in kagome material CsV$_{3}$Sb$_{5}$.

cond-mat.supr-con↗
arXiv2021

Pressure-induced Superconductivity in Noncentrosymmetric Weyl Semimetals LaAlX (X = Si and Ge)

In topological materials, Dirac fermions can split into two Weyl fermions with opposite chiralities due to the breaking of space inversion symmetry, while in non-centrosymmetric superconductors, novel superconducting electron pairing mechanisms arise because of the antisymmetric spin-orbit coupling. In this work, we report the pressure-introduced superconductivity in a typical noncentrosymmetric Weyl semimetal LaAlX (X=Si and Ge). Superconductivity was observed at around 65 GPa without structural phase transition. A typical dome-shape phase diagram is obtained with the maximum Tc of 2.5 K (2.1 K) for LaAlSi (LaAlGe). Furthermore, the application of pressure does not destroy the nontrivial band topology of LaAlSi up to 80.4 GPa, making such materials as potential candidates for realizing topological superconductivity. Our discovery of superconductivity in LaAlX (X=Si and Ge) will provide critical insight in noncentrosymmetric superconductors and stimulate further study on superconductivity in Weyl semimetals.

cond-mat.supr-con↗
arXiv2021

Charge-density-wave-induced bands renormalization and energy gaps in a kagome superconductor RbV3Sb5

Recently discovered Z2 topological kagome metals AV3Sb5 (A = K, Rb, and Cs) exhibit charge density wave (CDW) phases and novel superconducting paring states, providing a versatile platform for studying the interplay between electron correlation and quantum orders. Here we directly visualize CDW-induced bands renormalization and energy gaps in RbV3Sb5 using angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy, pointing to the key role of tuning van Hove singularities to the Fermi energy in mechanisms of ordering phases. Near the CDW transition temperature, the bands around the Brillouin zone (BZ) boundary are shifted to high-binding energy, forming an "M"-shape band with singularities near the Fermi energy. The Fermi surfaces are partially gapped and the electronic states on the residual ones should be possibly dedicated to the superconductivity. Our findings are significant in understanding CDW formation and its associated superconductivity.

cond-mat.supr-con↗
arXiv2021

Ion irradiation and implantation modifications of magneto-ionically induced exchange bias in Gd/NiCoO

Magneto-ionic control of magnetic properties through ionic migration has shown promise in enabling new functionalities in energy-efficient spintronic devices. In this work, we demonstrate the effect of helium ion irradiation and oxygen implantation on magneto-ionically induced exchange bias effect in Gd/Ni$_{0.33}$Co$_{0.67}$O heterostructures. Irradiation using $He^+$ leads to an expansion of the Ni$_{0.33}$Co$_{0.67}$O lattice due to strain relaxation. At low He+ fluence ($\leq$ 2$\times$10$^{14}$ ions cm$^{-2}$), the redox-induced interfacial magnetic moment initially increases, owing to enhanced oxygen migration. At higher fluence, the exchange bias is suppressed due to reduction of pinned uncompensated interfacial Ni$_{0.33}$Co$_{0.67}$O spins. For oxygen implanted samples, an initial lattice expansion below a dose of 5$\times$10$^{15}$ cm$^{-2}$ is subsequently dominated at higher dose by a lattice contraction and phase segregation into NiO and CoO-rich phases, which in turn alters the exchange bias. These results highlight the possibility of ion irradiation and implantation as an effective means to tailor magneto-ionic effects.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗
arXiv2021

Chirality-induced zigzag domain wall in in-plane magnetized ultrathin films

The domain structure in in-plane magnetized Fe/Ni/W(110) films is investigated using spin-polarized low-energy electron microscopy. A novel transition of the domain wall shape from a zigzag-like pattern to straight is observed as a function of the film thickness, which is triggered by the transition of the domain wall type from out-of-plane chiral wall to in-plane Néel wall. The contribution of the Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction to the wall energy is proposed to explain the transition of the domain wall shape, which is supported by Monte-Carlo simulations.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗
arXiv2021

Electrically Enhanced Exchange Bias via Solid State Magneto-Ionics

Electrically induced ionic motion offers a new way to realize voltage-controlled magnetism, opening the door to a new generation of logic, sensor, and data storage technologies. Here, we demonstrate an effective approach to magneto-ionically and electrically tune exchange bias in Gd/Ni$_{1-x}$Co$_{x}$O thin films (x=0.50, 0.67), where neither of the layers alone is ferromagnetic at room temperature. The Gd capping layer deposited onto antiferromagnetic Ni$_{1-x}$Co$_{x}$O initiates a solid-state redox reaction that reduces an interfacial region of the oxide to ferromagnetic NiCo. Exchange bias is established after field cooling, which can be enhanced by up to 35% after a voltage conditioning and subsequently reset with a second field cooling. These effects are caused by the presence of an interfacial ferromagnetic NiCo layer, which further alloys with the Gd layer upon field cooling and voltage application, as confirmed by electron microscopy and polarized neutron reflectometry studies. These results highlight the viability of the solid-state magneto-ionic approach to achieve electric control of exchange bias, with potentials for energy-efficient magneto-ionic devices.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗
arXiv2021

First-principles study of the crystal structure, electronic structure, and transport properties of NiTe$_2$ under pressure

Recent experiments showed the distinct observations on the transition metal ditelluride NiTe$_2$ under pressure: one reported a superconducting phase transition at 12 GPa, whereas another observed a sign reversal of Hall resistivity at 16 GPa without the appearance of superconductivity. To clarify the controversial experimental phenomena, we have carried out first-principles electronic structure calculations on the compressed NiTe$_2$ with structure searching and optimization. Our calculations show that the pressure can transform NiTe$_2$ from a layered P-3m1 phase to a cubic Pa-3 phase at $\sim$10 GPa. Meanwhile, both the P-3m1 and Pa-3 phases possess nontrivial topological properties. The calculated superconducting $T_c$'s for these two phases based on the electron-phonon coupling theory both approach 0 K. Further magnetic transport calculations reveal that the sign of Hall resistance for the Pa-3 phase is sensitive to the pressure and the charge doping, in contrast to the case of the P-3m1 phase. Our theoretical predictions on the compressed NiTe$_2$ wait for careful experimental examinations.

cond-mat.supr-con↗
arXiv2021

First-principles study of the superconductivity in LaO

A recent experiment reported the first rare-earth binary oxide superconductor LaO ($T_c $ $\sim$ 5 K) with a rock-salt structure [K. Kaminaga et al., J. Am. Chem. Soc. 140, 6754 (2018)]. Correspondingly, the underlying superconducting mechanism in LaO needs theoretical elucidation. Based on first-principles calculations on the electronic structure, lattice dynamics, and electron-phonon coupling of LaO, we show that the superconducting pairing in LaO belongs to the conventional Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BCS) type. Remarkably, the electrons and phonons of the heavy La atoms, instead of those of the light O atoms, contribute most to the electron-phonon coupling. We further find that both the biaxial tensile strain and the pure electron doping can enhance the superconducting $T_c$ of LaO. With the synergistic effect of electron doping and tensile strain, the $T_c$ could be even higher, for example, 11.11 K at a doping of 0.2 electrons per formula unit and a tensile strain of $4\%$. Moreover, our calculations show that the superconductivity in LaO thin film remains down to the trilayer thickness with a $T_c$ of 1.4 K.

cond-mat.supr-con↗