arXiv subjects

Ki-Seok Kim

Publications and source records attributed to Ki-Seok Kim.

At least 91 records · Page 5Linked to original sources

arXiv2013

Dirac vs. Weyl in topological insulators: Adler-Bell-Jackiw anomaly in transport phenomena

Dirac metals (gapless semi-conductors) are believed to turn into Weyl metals when perturbations, which break either time reversal symmetry or inversion symmetry, are employed. However, no experimental evidence has been reported for the existence of Weyl fermions in three dimensions. Applying magnetic fields near the topological phase transition from a topological insulator to a band insulator in Bi1-xSbx, we observe not only the weak anti-localization phenomenon in magnetoconductivity near zero magnetic fields (B < 0.4 T) but also its upturn above 0.4 T only for E // B. This incompatible coexistence between weak anti-localization and negative magnetoresistivity is attributed to the Adler-Bell-Jackiw anomaly (topological E B term) in the presence of weak anti-localization corrections.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2013

Interplay between interaction and chiral anomaly: Anisotropy in the electrical resistivity of interacting Weyl metals

We predict that long-range interactions give rise to anisotropy in the electrical resistivity of Weyl metals at low temperatures, where the electrical resistivity becomes much reduced when electric fields are applied to the direction of the momentum vector to connect two paired Weyl points. Performing the renormalization group analysis, we find that the distance between two Weyl points becomes enhanced logarithmically at low temperatures although the coupling constant of such interactions vanishes inverse-logarithmically. Considering the Adler-Bell-Jackiw anomaly, scattering between these two Weyl points becomes suppressed to increase electrical conductivity in the "longitudinal" direction, counter-intuitive in the respect that interactions are expected to reduce metallicity. We also propose that the anomalous contribution in the Hall effect shows the logarithmic enhancement as a function of temperature, originating from the fact that the anomalous Hall coefficient turns out to be proportional to the distance between two paired Weyl points. Correlations with topological constraints allow unexpected and exotic transport properties.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2013

Topological phase transitions driven by magnetic phase transitions in FexBi2Te3 (0 < x < 0.1) single crystals

We propose a phase diagram for FexBi2Te3 (0 < x < 0.1) single crystals, which belong to a class of magnetically bulk-doped topological insulators. The evolution of magnetic correlations from ferromagnetic- to antiferromagnetic- gives rise to topological phase transitions, where the paramagnetic topological insulator of Bi2Te3 turns into a band insulator with ferromagnetic-cluster glassy behaviours around x ~ 0.025, and it further evolves to a topological insulator with valence-bond glassy behaviours, which spans over the region between x ~ 0.03 up to x ~ 0.1. This phase diagram is verified by measuring magnetization, magnetotransport, and angle-resolved photoemission spectra with theoretical discussions.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2012

$z = 3$ antiferromagnetic quantum criticality and emergence of fermionized skyrmions

Hertz-Moriya-Millis theory with dynamical critical exponent $z = 2$ has been proposed to describe antiferromagnetic quantum criticality in itinerant electron systems. In this study we show that the dynamical critical exponent changes from $z = 2$ to $z = 3$ at low temperatures, which results from effective long-range interactions between spin fluctuations, generated by Fermi-surface fluctuations beyond the Eliashberg framework. We claim that the underlying physics for the $z = 3$ antiferromagnetic quantum criticality is the emergence of fermionized skyrmion excitations at low energies, which form a Fermi surface, referred as a skyrmion liquid, where the interplay between itinerant electrons and skyrmions is argued to allow fermionized skyrmions. We construct a dual field theory in terms of skyrmion excitations, and obtain the $z = 3$ antiferromagnetic quantum criticality. This demonstration suggests the expected but nontrivial consistency between weak-coupling and strong-coupling theories.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2012

Nature of an intermediate non-Fermi liquid state in Ge-substituted YbRh$_{2}$Si$_{2}$: Fermionized skyrmions, Lifshitz transition, Skyrmion liquid, and Gruneisen ratio

We propose a skyrmion liquid state for the non-Fermi liquid (NFL) phase in Ge-substituted YbRh$_{2}$Si$_{2}$, where skyrmions form their Fermi surface, argued to result from the strongly coupled nature between skyrmions and itinerant electrons. The fermionized skyrmion theory identifies the antiferromagnetic (AF) transition with the Lifshitz transition, where the quantum critical point (QCP) is characterized by the dynamical critical exponent $z = 2$. Nonlocal interactions between skyrmions allow a critical line above the AF QCP, which originates from the Kondo-coupling effect with itinerant electrons. This critical line is described by the skyrmion liquid state, which results in Landau damping for spin fluctuations, thus characterized by $z = 3$. As a result, the Gruneisen ratio is predicted to change from $\sim T^{-1}$ at the AF QCP to $\sim T^{-2/3}$ in the NFL phase.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2012

Topological phase transition in Dirac fermionic heterostructures

Materials with non-trivial topology in their electronic structures enforce the existence of helical Dirac fermionic surface states. We discovered emergent topological phases in the stacked structures of topological insulator and band insulator layers where the surface Dirac fermions interact to each other with particular helicity ordering. Using first-principles calculations and a model Lagrangian, we explicitly demonstrated that such helicity ordering occurs in real materials of ternary chalcogen compounds and determines their topological insulating phase. Our results reveal the rich collective nature of interacting surface Dirac fermions, and pave the way for utilizing topological phases for technological devices such as non-volatile memories.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2012

Enhancement of the superconducting transition temperature from the competition between electron-electron correlations and electron-phonon interactions

We uncover that the competition between electron-electron correlations and electron-phonon interactions gives rise to unexpectedly huge enhancement of the superconducting transition temperature, several hundreds percent larger ($\geq$ 200 K) than that of the case when only one of the two is taken into account ($\sim$ 30 K). Our renormalization group analysis claims that this mechanism for the enhancement of the critical temperature is not limited on superconductivity but applied to various Fermi surface instabilities, proposing an underlying universal structure, which turns out to be essentially identical to that of a recent study [Phys. Rev. Lett. {\bf 108}, 046601 (2012)] on the enhancement of the Kondo temperature in the presence of Rashba spin-orbit interactions. We also discuss the stability of superconductivity against nonmagnetic randomness.

cond-mat.supr-con↗

arXiv2012

Orbital selective Fermi surface shifts and mechanism of high T$_c$ superconductivity in correlated AFeAs (A=Li,Na)

Based on the dynamical mean field theory (DMFT) and angle resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES), we have investigated the mechanism of high $T_c$ superconductivity in stoichiometric LiFeAs. The calculated spectrum is in excellent agreement with the observed ARPES measurement. The Fermi surface (FS) nesting, which is predicted in the conventional density functional theory method, is suppressed due to the orbital-dependent correlation effect with the DMFT method. We have shown that such marginal breakdown of the FS nesting is an essential condition to the spin-fluctuation mediated superconductivity, while the good FS nesting in NaFeAs induces a spin density wave ground state. Our results indicate that fully charge self-consistent description of the correlation effect is crucial in the description of the FS nesting-driven instabilities.

cond-mat.supr-con↗

arXiv2011

A phenomenological description on an incoherent Fermi liquid near optimal doping in high T_{c} cuprates

Marginal Fermi-liquid physics near optimal doping in high T_{c} cuprates has been explained within two competing scenarios such as the spin-fluctuation theory based on an itinerant picture and the slave-particle approach based on a localized picture. In this study we propose an alternative scenario for the anomalous transport within the context of the slave-particle approach. Although the marginal Fermi-liquid phenomenology was interpreted previously within deconfinement of the compact gauge theory, referred to as the strange metal phase, we start from confinement, introducing the Polyakov-loop parameter into an SU(2) gauge theory formulation of the t-J model. The Polyakov-loop parameter gives rise to incoherent electrons through the confinement of spinons and holons, which result from huge imaginary parts of self-energy corrections for spinons and holons. This confinement scenario serves a novel mechanism for the marginal Fermi-liquid transport in the respect that the scattering source has nothing to do with symmetry breaking. Furthermore, the incoherent Fermi-liquid state evolves into the Fermi liquid phase through crossover instead of an artificial second-order transition as temperature is lowered, where the crossover phenomenon does not result from the Anderson-Higgs mechanism but originate from an energy scale in the holon sector. We fit an experimental data for the electrical resistivity around the optimal doping and find a reasonable match between our theory and the experiment.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2011

Interplay between interaction and chiral anomaly in the holographic approach

Strongly coupled conformal field theory appears to describe universal scaling around quantum criticality, where critical exponents reflect the nature of emergent excitations. In particular, novel symmetries can emerge from strong interactions, expected to be responsible for quantum number fractionalization. The underlying mechanism has been proposed that an emergent enhanced symmetry allows a topological term associated with anomaly, which assigns a fermion's quantum number to a topological excitation, referred as the Goldstone-Wilczek current. Although this mechanism has been verified in one dimensional interacting electrons, where either spinons or holons are identified with topological solitons, its generalization to higher dimensions is beyond the field theoretic framework in the respect that interplay between interaction and anomaly cannot be taken into account sincerely within the field theory technique above one dimension. In this study we examine the interplay between correlations and topological terms based on the holographic approach, allowing us to incorporate such nonperturbative quantum effects via solving classical equations of motion but on a curved space. We solve the Einstein-Maxwell-Chern-Simons theory on the Reissner-Nordström-AdS$_5$ in the extremal limit, and uncover novel critical exponents to appear in the current-current correlation functions, where both the emergent locality and the Chern-Simons term play an important role in such critical exponents. We speculate that the corresponding conformal field theory may result from interacting U(1) currents with chiral anomaly at finite density, expected to be applicable to topological insulators with strong interactions, where dyon-type excitations appear to carry nontrivial fermion's quantum numbers.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2011

A phase diagram for a topological Kondo insulating system

The discovery of topological insulators in non-interacting electron systems has motivated the community to search such topological states of matter in correlated electrons both theoretically and experimentally. In this paper we investigate a phase diagram for a topological Kondo insulating system, where an emergent "spin"-dependent Kondo effect gives rise to an inversion for heavy-fermion bands, responsible for a topological Kondo insulator. Resorting to the U(1) slave-boson mean-field analysis, we uncover an additional phase transition inside the Kondo insulating state in two dimensions, which results from the appearance of the topological Kondo insulator. On the other hand, we observe that the Kondo insulating state is distinguished into three insulating phases in three dimensions, identified with the weak topological Kondo insulator, the strong topological Kondo insulator, and the normal Kondo insulator, respectively, and classified by Z$_{2}$ topological indices. We discuss the possibility of novel quantum criticality between the fractionalized Fermi liquid and the topological Kondo insulator, where the band inversion occurs with the formation of the heavy-fermion band at the same time.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2011

Preformed heavy-electrons at the Quantum Critical Point in heavy fermion compounds

The existence of multiple energy scales is regarded as a signature of the Kondo breakdown mechanism for explaining the quantum critical behavior of certain heavy fermion compounds, like YbRh$_{2}$Si$_{2}$. The nature of the intermediate state between the heavy Fermi liquid and the quantum critical region, however, remains elusive. In this study we suggest an incoherent heavy-fermion scenario, where inelastic scattering with novel soft modes of the dynamical exponent $z = 3$ gives rise to non-Fermi liquid physics for thermodynamics and transport despite the formation of the heavy-fermion band. We discuss a crossover from $z = 3$ to $z = 1$ for quantum phase fluctuations.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2011

Evidence of electron fractionalization in the Hall coefficient at Mott criticality

Hall coefficient implies the mechanism for reconstruction of a Fermi surface, distinguishing competing scenarios for Mott criticality such as electron fractionalization, dynamical mean-field theory, and metal-insulator transition driven by symmetry breaking. We find that electron fractionalization leaves a signature for the Hall coefficient at Mott criticality in two dimensions, a unique feature differentiated from other theories. We evaluate the Hall coefficient based on the quantum Boltzman equation approach, guaranteeing gauge invariance in both longitudinal and transverse transport coefficients.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2011

Role of vertex corrections in the $T$-linear resistivity at the Kondo breakdown quantum critical point

The Kondo breakdown scenario has been claimed to allow the $T$-linear resistivity in the vicinity of the Kondo breakdown quantum critical point, two cornerstones of which are the dynamical exponent $z = 3$ quantum criticality for hybridization fluctuations in three dimensions and irrelevance of vertex corrections for transport due to the presence of localized electrons. We revisit the issue of vertex corrections in electrical transport coefficients. Assuming that two kinds of bosonic degrees of freedom, hybridization excitations and gauge fluctuations, are in equilibrium, we derive coupled quantum Boltzmann equations for two kinds of fermions, conduction electrons and spinons. We reveal that vertex corrections play a certain role, changing the $T$-linear behavior into $T^{5/3}$ in three dimensions. However, the $T^{5/3}$ regime turns out to be narrow, and the $T$-linear resistivity is still expected in most temperature ranges at the Kondo breakdown quantum critical point in spite of the presence of vertex corrections. We justify our evaluation, showing that the Hall coefficient is not renormalized to remain as the Fermi-liquid value at the Kondo breakdown quantum critical point.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2011

Interplay between the Kondo effect and randomness: Griffiths phase in MxTiSe2 (M = Co, Ni, and Fe) single crystals

We investigate the interplay between the Kondo effect and randomness in MxTiSe2 (M = Co, Ni, and Fe) single crystals. Although the typical low-T upturn of resistivity implies the Kondo effect around the single-ion Kondo temperature \overline{T}_{K}, positive magnetoresistance linearly proportional to the magnetic field and the power-law scaling of magnetization suggest the forbidden coexistence between Kondo effect and time reversal symmetry breaking. This puzzling result is resolved by the Griffiths scenario - disorder-induced distribution of the Kondo temperature produces an effective Kondo temperature (\overline{T}_{K}) much lower than \overline{T}_{K}, allowing unscreened local moments above \overline{T}_{K} and resulting in non-Fermi liquid properties in MxTiSe2 below the percolation threshold (x<xc).

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2011

Sondheimer Oscillation as a Fingerprint of Surface Dirac Fermions

Topological states of matter challenge the paradigm of symmetry breaking, characterized by gapless boundary modes and protected by the topological property of the ground state. Recently, angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) has revealed that semiconductors of Bi$_{2}$Se$_{3}$ and Bi$_{2}$Te$_{3}$ belong to such a class of materials. Here, we present undisputable evidence for the existence of gapless surface Dirac fermions from transport in Bi$_{2}$Te$_{3}$. We observe Sondheimer oscillation in magnetoresistance (MR). This oscillation originates from the quantization of motion due to the confinement of electrons within the surface layer. Based on Sondheimer's transport theory, we determine the thickness of the surface state from the oscillation data. In addition, we uncover the topological nature of the surface state, fitting consistently both the non-oscillatory part of MR and the Hall resistance. The side-jump contribution turns out to dominate around 1 T in Hall resistance while the Berry-curvature effect dominates in 3 T $\sim$ 4 T.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2011

Dissipationless mechanism of skyrmion Hall current in double-exchange ferromagnets

We revisit a theory of skyrmion transport in ferromagnets. On a basis of an effective U(1) gauge theory for spin-chirality fluctuations in double-exchange ferromagnets, we derive an expression for the velocity of a skyrmion core driven by the dc electric field. We find that mutual feedback effects between conduction electrons and localized spins give rise to Chern-Simons terms, suggesting a dissipationless mechanism for the skyrmion Hall current. A conventional description of the current-induced skyrmion motion, appearing through the spin transfer torque and scattering events, is reproduced in a certain limit of our description, where the Chern-Simons terms are not fully incorporated. Our theory is applicable to not only metallic but also insulating systems, where the purely topological and dissipationless skyrmion Hall current can be induced in the presence of an energy gap.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2011

A criterion for the nature of the superconducting transition in strongly interacting field theories : Holographic approach

It is beyond the present techniques based on perturbation theory to reveal the nature of phase transitions in strongly interacting field theories. Recently, the holographic approach has provided us with an effective dual description, mapping strongly coupled conformal field theories to classical gravity theories. Resorting to the holographic superconductor model, we propose a general criterion for the nature of the superconducting phase transition based on effective interactions between vortices. We find "tricritical" points in terms of the chemical potential for U(1) charges and an effective Ginzburg-Landau parameter, where vortices do not interact to separate the second order (repulsive) from the first order (attractive) transitions. We interpret the first order transition as the Coleman-Weinberg mechanism, arguing that it is relevant to superconducting instabilities around quantum criticality.

hep-th↗