arXiv subjects

M. Acquarone

Publications and source records attributed to M. Acquarone.

11 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2008

Spin wave excitations in the antiferromagnetic Heisenberg-Kondo model for heavy fermions

Recent inelastic neutron scattering experiments in CeIn$_{3}$ and CePd$_{2}$Si$_{2}$ single crystals measured spin wave excitations at low temperatures. These two heavy fermion compounds exhibit antiferromagnetic long-range order, but a strong competition between the Ruderman-Kittel-Kasuya-Yosida(RKKY) interaction and Kondo effect is evidenced by their nearly equal Néel and Kondo temperatures. Our aim is to show how magnons such as measured in the antiferromagnetic phase of these Ce compounds, can be described with a microscopic Heisenberg-Kondo model introduced by J.R.Iglesias, C.Lacroix and B.Coqblin, used before for studies of the non-magnetic phase. The model includes the correlated Ce-$4 f$ electrons hybridized with the conduction band, where we also allow for correlations, and we consider competing RKKY (Heisenberg-like $J_{H} $) and Kondo ($J_{K}$) antiferromagnetic couplings. Carrying on a series of unitary transformations, we perturbatively derive a second-order effective Hamiltonian which, projected onto the antiferromagnetic electron ground state, describes the spin wave excitations, renormalized by their interaction with correlated itinerant electrons. We numerically study how the different parameters of the model influence the renormalization of the magnons, yielding useful information for the analysis of inelastic neutron scattering experiments in antiferromagnetic heavy fermion compounds. We also compare our results with the available experimental data, finding good agreement with the spin wave measurements in cubic CeIn$_3$.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2007

Renormalized spin wave excitations in the antiferromagnetic Heisenberg-Kondo model for heavy fermions

Recent inelastic neutron scattering experiments in CeIn3 and CePd2Si2 single crystals, measured spin wave excitations at low temperatures. These two heavy fermion compounds exhibit antiferromagnetic long-range order, but a strong competition between the Ruderman-Kittel-Kasuya-Yosida(RKKY) interaction and Kondo effect is evidenced by their nearly equal Neel and Kondo temperatures. Our aim is to show how magnons such as measured in the antiferromagnetic phase of these Ce compounds, can be described with a microscopic Heisenberg-Kondo model as introduced by J.R.Iglesias, C.Lacroix and B.Coqblin, used before for studies of the non-magnetic phase. The model includes the correlated Ce-4f electrons hybridized with the conduction band, and we consider competing RKKY (Heisenberg-like J_{H}) and Kondo (J_{K}) antiferromagnetic couplings. Carrying on a series of unitary transformations, we perturbatively derive a second-order effective Hamiltonian which, projected onto the antiferromagnetic electron ground state, describes the spin wave excitations, renormalized by their interaction with correlated itinerant electrons. We numerically study how the different parameters of the model influence the renormalization of the magnons, yielding useful information for the analysis of inelastic neutron scattering experiments in antiferromagnetic heavy fermion compounds. We also compare our results with available experimental data, finding good agreement with the spin wave measurements in cubic CeIn3.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2006

Revisiting the Froehlich-type transformation when degenerate states are present

We focus on the definition of the unitary transformation leading to an effective second order Hamiltonian, inside degenerate eigensubspaces of the non-perturbed Hamiltonian. We shall prove, by working out in detail the Su-Schrieffer-Heeger Hamiltonian case, that the presence of degenerate states, including fermions and bosons, which might seemingly pose an obstacle towards the determination of such "Froehlich-transformed" Hamiltonian, in fact does not: we explicitly show how degenerate states may be harmlessly included in the treatment, as they contribute with vanishing matrix elements to the effective Hamiltonian matrix. In such a way, one can use without difficulty the eigenvalues of the effective Hamiltonian to describe the renormalized energies of the real excitations in the interacting system. Our argument applies also to few-body systems where one may not invoke the thermodynamic limit to get rid of the "dangerous" perturbation terms.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2003

Antiferromagnetism of almost localized fermions: Evolution from Slater-type to Mott-Hubbard gap

We supplement (and critically overview) the existing extensive analysis of antiferromagnetic solution for the Hubbard model with a detailed discussion of two specific features, namely (i) the evolution of the magnetic (Slater) gap (here renormalized by the electronic correlations) into the Mott-Hubbard or atomic gap, and (ii) a rather weak renormalization of the effective mass by the correlations in the half-filled-band case, which contrasts with that for the paramagnetic case. The mass remains strongly enhanced in the non-half-filled-band case. We also stress the difference between magnetic and non-magnetic contributions to the gap. These results are discussed within the slave boson approach in the saddle-point approximation, in which there appears a non-linear staggered molecular field due to the electronic correlations that leads to the appearance of the magnetic gap. They reproduce correctly the ground-state energy in the limit of strong correlations. A brief comparison with the solution in the limit of infinite dimensions and the corresponding situation in the doubly-degenerate-band case with one electron per atom is also made.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2003

Magnons in CMR pyrochlore Tl2Mn2O7

Well defined spin waves were observed when the spin dynamics of Tl2Mn2O7, the first pyrochlore compound found to exhibit colossal magnetoresistance, was measured [J.W.Lynn et al., Phys.Rev.Lett. 80,4582(1998)], in stark contrast with the experimental results on the larger family of magnetoresistive manganites with perovskite structure. In this work, we present our calculation for the spin waves in Tl2Mn2O7, which we described using the microscopic generic model proposed recently for this compound [C.I.Ventura and M.A.Gusmao, Phys.Rev.B 65, 14422(2002)]. We have employed a canonical transformation to determine perturbatively the effective spin-wave Hamiltonian, obtaining therefrom the renormalization of the ferromagnetic spin waves related to the localized Mn$^{4+}$ spins, due to their coupling with the conduction electrons present. We have calculated the magnon dispersion relations along different paths in the first Brillouin zone, comparing them with those which are obtained for an ideal isotropic ferromagnet. This comparison evidences an agreement between the ferromagnetic magnons obtained from the generic model and the bare spin waves, such as had been found in neutron scattering experiments.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2003

A model Hamiltonian for MgB2 which takes into account its unusual phononic features

Taking as a starting point the results of LDA calculations, which show that in MgB2 the phonons have a strong quartic anharmonicity and that the bond-stretching electron-phonon interaction (EPI) has both a linear and a large quadratic component, we propose a model Hamiltonian which succesfully matches a number of experimental evidences. We relate the single critical temperature for both superconducting gaps to a phonon-induced inter-band coupling whose amplitude increases with temperature. We also obtain phonon frequencies and linewidths depending on the band filling, as well as band energies and hybridization amplitudes depending on the phonon number.

cond-mat.supr-con↗

arXiv2003

Effective inter-band coupling in MgB2 due to anharmonic phonons

We investigate the origin of the inter-band coupling in MgB2 by focusing on its unusual phononic features, namely, the strong anharmonicity of the phonons and the presence of both linear and quadratic electron-phonon interactions of the Su-Schrieffer-Heeger (SSH) type. The bare electronic Hamiltonian has two bands with intra- and inter-band hopping, which lead to two decoupled hybridized bands. The phonon Hamiltonian including the anharmonic terms is diagonalized approximately by a squeezing transformation, which causes the softening of the phonon frequency. The linear SSH coupling amplitude is reduced, consistently with the estimates from first-principle calculations. Additionally, the quadratic coupling generates an effective phonon-induced interaction between the hybridized bands, which is non-vanishing even in the limit of vanishing inter-bare-band hopping amplitude.

cond-mat.supr-con↗

arXiv2000

A non-perturbative treatment of the generalized Su-Schreiffer-Heeger Hamiltonian on a dimer

Starting from the Hamiltonian for a dimer which includes all the electronic and electron-phonon terms consistent with a non-degenerate orbital, by a sequence of displacement and squeezing transformation we obtain an effective polaronic Hamiltonian. The renormalized electronic interactions differ from the results of semiclassical or perturbative treatments. The properties of the variationally determined ground state of two particles in the orbital are discussed for variable dimer length in the adiabatic limit.

cond-mat↗

arXiv2000

Distance-depending electron-phonon interactions from one- and two-body electronic terms in a dimer

For a dimer with a non-degenerate orbital built from atomic wave functions of Gaussian shape we evaluate all the electron-phonon couplings derived from the one-body and two-body electronic interactions, considering both the adiabatic and extreme non-adiabatic limit. Not only the values of the coupling parameters in the two limits, but also the expressions of the corresponding terms in the Hamiltonian differ. Depending on the distance between the dimer ions, some of the two-body couplings are comparable, or even larger than the one-body ones.

cond-mat↗

arXiv1999

Model Calculation of Electron-Phonon Couplings in a Dimer with a Non-Degenerate Orbital

We evaluate all the electron-phonon couplings derived from the one-body electronic interactions, in both the adiabatic and extreme non-adiabatic limit, for a dimer with a non-degenerate orbital built from atomic wave functions of Gaussian shape. We find largely different values of the coupling parameters in the two cases, as well as different expressions of the corresponding terms in the Hamiltonian.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv1998

Electronic and phononic states of the Holstein-Hubbard dimer of variable length

We consider a model Hamiltonian for a dimer including all the electronic one- and two-body terms consistent with a single orbital per site, a free Einstein phonon term, and an electron-phonon coupling of the Holstein type. The bare electronic interaction parameters were evaluated in terms of Wannier functions built from Gaussian atomic orbitals. An effective polaronic Hamiltonian was obtained by an unrestricted displaced-oscillator transformation, followed by evaluation of the phononic terms over a squeezed-phonon variational wave function. For the cases of quarter-filled and half-filled orbital, and over a range of dimer length values, the ground state was identified by simultaneously and independently optimizing the orbital shape, the phonon displacement and the squeezing effect strength. As the dimer length varies, we generally find discontinuous changes of both electronic and phononic states, accompanied by an appreciable renormalization of the effective electronic interactions across the transitions, due to the equilibrium shape of the wave functions strongly depending on the phononic regime and on the type of ground state.

cond-mat.str-el↗