arXiv subjects

Niels de Vries

Publications and source records attributed to Niels de Vries.

4 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Reexamining the strange metal charge response with transmission inelastic electron scattering

The strange metal remains one of the great unsolved problems for 21st century science. Since the early development of the marginal Fermi liquid phenomenology, it has been clear that progress requires detailed knowledge of the momentum- and frequency-dependent charge susceptibility, $χ(\mathbf{q},ω)$, particularly at large momenta. Electron energy-loss spectroscopy (EELS), performed in either reflection or transmission geometry, provides the most direct probe of $χ(\mathbf{q},ω)$. However, measurements over the past four decades have yielded conflicting results, with some studies reporting a dispersing RPA-like plasmon and others observing a strongly overdamped, incoherent response. Here we report a transmission EELS study of Bi$_2$Sr$_2$CaCu$_2$O$_{8+x}$ (Bi-2212) that simultaneously achieves high energy resolution ($ΔE \approx 30$ meV) and high momentum resolution ($Δq \approx 0.01$ Å$^{-1}$). To address issues of reproducibility, measurements were repeated ten times on five different Bi-2212 flakes, benchmarked against aluminum, a well-characterized Fermi liquid, and quantitatively compared with prior studies spanning four decades. At momenta $q < 0.15$ Å$^{-1}$, we observe a highly damped plasmon whose linewidth is comparable to its energy. At larger momenta, $q > 0.15$ Å$^{-1}$, this excitation does not disperse but instead evolves into an incoherent continuum, with no evidence for the RPA-like dispersion reported in some earlier works. Comparison with recent RIXS measurements on Bi-based cuprates supports the view that Bi-2212 is an incoherent metal with strongly damped charge excitations.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2025

Comparative analysis of plasmon modes in layered Lindhard metals and strange metals

The enigmatic strange metal remains one of the central unsolved problems of 21st century science. Understanding this phase of matter requires knowledge of the momentum- and energy-resolved dynamic charge susceptibility, $χ(q,ω)$, especially at finite momentum. Inelastic electron scattering (EELS), performed in either transmission (T-EELS) or reflection (R-EELS) geometries, is a powerful probe of $χ(q,ω)$. For the prototypical strange metal Bi$_2$Sr$_2$CaCu$_2$O$_{8+x}$, T-EELS, R-EELS, and infrared (IR) spectroscopy agree at $q \sim 0$, all revealing a highly damped plasmon near 1 eV. At larger $q$, however, EELS results show unresolved discrepancies. Since IR data are highly reproducible, it is advantageous to use IR data to calculate what the expected EELS response should be at modest $q$. Building on prior R-EELS work [J. Chen \textit{et al.}, Phys. Rev. B. \textbf{109}, 045108 (2024)], we extend this approach to T-EELS for finite stacks of metallic layers, comparing a "textbook" Lindhard metal to a strange metal. In the Lindhard case, the low-$q$ response is dominated by long-lived, standing wave plasmon modes arising from interlayer Coulomb coupling, with in-plane dispersions that resemble the well-known Fetter modes of layered metals. This behavior depends only on the geometry and the long-ranged nature of the Coulomb interaction, and is largely insensitive to layer details. At larger $q$, the response reflects the microscopic properties of individual layers. For the strange metal, calculations based on IR data predict a highly damped plasmon with weak dispersion and no distinct surface mode. While our results match IR and R-EELS at low $q$, they do not reproduce any published EELS spectra at large $q$, highlighting unresolved discrepancies that demand further experimental investigation.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2025

Quantum Fisher Information Reveals UV-IR Mixing in the Strange Metal

The density-density response in optimally doped Bi$_2$Sr$_2$CaCu$_2$O$_{8+x}$ has recently been shown to exhibit conformal symmetry. Using, the experimentally inferred conformal dynamic susceptibility, we compute the resultant quantum Fisher information (QFI), a witness to multi-partite entanglement. For a Fermi liquid, we find that the QFI grows quadratically as the temperature increases, consistent then with the phase space available for scattering in the standard theory of metals. By contrast, the QFI in a strange metal increases as a power law at as the temperature decreases, but ultimately extrapolates to a constant at $T=0$. The constant is of the form, $ω_g^{2Δ}$, where $Δ$ is the conformal dimension and $ω_g$ is the UV cutoff which is on the order of the pseudogap. As this constant {depends on both UV and IR properties}, it illustrates that multipartite entanglement in a strange metal exhibits UV-IR mixing, a benchmark feature of doped Mott insulators as exemplified by dynamical spectral weight transfer. We conclude with a discussion of the implication of our results for low-energy reductions of the Hubbard model.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2025

Measurement of the dynamic charge susceptibility near the charge density wave transition in ErTe$_3$

A charge density wave (CDW) is a phase of matter characterized by a periodic modulation of the valence electron density accompanied by a distortion of the lattice structure. The microscopic details of CDW formation are closely tied to the dynamic charge susceptibility, $χ(q,ω)$, which describes the behavior of electronic collective modes. Despite decades of extensive study, the behavior of $χ(q,ω)$ in the vicinity of a CDW transition has never been measured with high energy resolution ($\sim$meV). Here, we investigate the canonical CDW transition in ErTe$_3$ using momentum-resolved electron energy loss spectroscopy (M-EELS), a technique uniquely sensitive to valence band charge excitations. Unlike phonons in these materials, which undergo conventional softening due to the Kohn anomaly at the CDW wavevector, the electronic excitations display purely relaxational dynamics that are well described by a diffusive model. The diffusivity peaks around 250 K, just below the critical temperature. Additionally, we report, for the first time, a divergence in the real part of $χ(q,ω)$ in the static limit ($ω\rightarrow 0$), a phenomenon predicted to characterize CDWs since the 1970s. These results highlight the importance of energy- and momentum-resolved measurements of electronic susceptibility and demonstrate the power of M-EELS as a versatile probe of charge dynamics in materials.

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