arXiv subjects

Nitesh Kumar

Publications and source records attributed to Nitesh Kumar.

90 records · Page 5Linked to original sources

arXiv2017

Electronic properties of topological insulator candidate CaAgAs

The topological phases of matter provide the opportunity to observe many exotic properties, like the existence of two dimensional topological surface states in the form of Dirac cone in topological insulators, chiral transport through open Fermi arc in Weyl semimetals etc. However, these properties can only affect the transport characteristics and therefore can be useful for applications only if the topological phenomena occur near the Fermi level. CaAgAs is a promising candidate, wherein the ab-initio calculations predict line-node at the Fermi level which on including spin-orbit coupling transforms into a topological insulator. In this report, we study the electronic structure of CaAgAs with angle resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES), ab-initio calculations and transport measurements. The ARPES results show that the bulk valence band crosses the Fermi energy at gamma-point and the band dispersion matches the ab-initio calculations closely on shifting the Fermi energy by -0.5 eV. ARPES results are in good agreement with our transport measurements which show abundant p-type carriers.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2017

Extremely high magnetoresistance and conductivity in the type-II Weyl semimetals WP2 and MoP2

The peculiar band structure of semimetals exhibiting Dirac and Weyl crossings can lead to spectacular electronic properties such as large mobilities accompanied by extremely high magnetoresistance. In particular, two closely neighbouring Weyl points of the same chirality are protected from annihilation by structural distortions or defects, thereby significantly reducing the scattering probability between them. Here we present the electronic properties of the transition metal diphosphides, WP2 and MoP2, that are type-II Weyl semimetals with robust Weyl points. We present transport and angle resolved photoemission spectroscopy measurements, and first principles calculations. Our single crystals of WP2 display an extremely low residual low-temperature resistivity of 3 nohm-cm accompanied by an enormous and highly anisotropic magnetoresistance above 200 million % at 63 T and 2.5 K. These properties are likely a consequence of the novel Weyl fermions expressed in this compound. We observe a large suppression of charge carrier backscattering in WP2 from transport measurements.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2017

Manifestation of the Berry curvature in Co2TiSn Heusler films

Various Co2 based Heusler compounds are predicted to be Weyl materials. These systems with broken symmetry possess a large Berry curvature, and introduce exotic transport properties. The present study on epitaxially grown Co2TiSn films is an initial approach to understand and explore this possibility. The anomalous Hall effect in the well-ordered Co2TiSn films has been investigated both experimentally and theoretically. The measured Hall conductivity is in good agreement to the calculated Berry curvature. Small deviations between them are due to the influence of skew scattering on the Hall effect. From theoretical point of view, the main contribution to the anomalous Hall effect originates from slightly gapped nodal lines, due to a symmetry reduction induced by the magnetization. It has been found that only part of the nodal lines contributed near to the anomalous Hall conductivity at a fixed Fermi energy which can be explained from a magnetic symmetry analysis. Furthermore, from hard x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy measurements, we establish the electronic structure in the film that is comparable to the theoretical density of states calculations. The present results provide deeper insight into the spintronics from the prospect of topology.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2017

Magnetic field induced strong valley polarization in the three dimensional topological semimetal LaBi

LaBi is a three-dimensional rocksalt-type material with a surprisingly quasi-two-dimensional electronic structure. It exhibits excellent electronic properties such as the existence of nontrivial Dirac cones, extremely large magnetoresistance, and high charge-carrier mobility. The cigar-shaped electron valleys make the charge transport highly anisotropic when the magnetic field is varied from one crystallographic axis to another. We show that the electrons can be polarized effectively in these electron valleys under a rotating magnetic field. We achieved a polarization of 60% at 2 K despite the coexistence of three-dimensional hole pockets. The valley polarization in LaBi is compared to the sister compound LaSb where it is found to be smaller. The performance of LaBi is comparable to the highly efficient bismuth.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2016

Unusual magneto-transport from Si-square nets in topological semimetal HfSiS

The class of topological semimetals comprises a large pool of compounds. Together they provide a wide platform to realize exotic quasiparticles for example Dirac, nodal line Dirac and Weyl fermions. In this letter, we report the Berry phase, Fermi surface topology and anisotropic magnetoresistance of HfSiS which has recently been predicted to be a nodal line semimetal. This compound contains large carrier density, higher than most of the known semimetals. Massive amplitudes of de Haas-van Alphen and Shubnikov-de Haas oscillations up to 20 K in 7 T assist us in witnessing nontrivial pi-Berry phase which is a consequence of topological Dirac-type dispersion of bands originating from the hybridization of px + py and dx2-y2 orbitals of square-net plane of Si and Hf atoms, respectively. Furthermore, we establish the 3D Fermi-surface which consists of very asymmetric water caltrop-like electron and barley seed-like hole pockets which account for the anisotropic magnetoresistance in HfSiS.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2016

Topological quantum phase transition and superconductivity induced by pressure in the bismuth tellurohalide BiTeI

A pressure-induced topological quantum phase transition has been theoretically predicted for the semiconductor BiTeI with giant Rashba spin splitting. In this work, the evolution of the electrical transport properties in BiTeI and BiTeBr is investigated under high pressure. The pressure-dependent resistivity in a wide temperature range passes through a minimum at around 3 GPa, indicating the predicted transition in BiTeI. Superconductivity is observed in both BiTeI and BiTeBr while the resistivity at higher temperatures still exhibits semiconducting behavior. Theoretical calculations suggest that the superconductivity may develop from the multi-valley semiconductor phase. The superconducting transition temperature Tc increases with applied pressure and reaches a maximum value of 5.2 K at 23.5 GPa for BiTeI (4.8 K at 31.7 GPa for BiTeBr), followed by a slow decrease. Our results demonstrate that BiTeX (X = I, Br) compounds with non-trivial topology of electronic states display new ground states upon compression.

cond-mat.supr-con↗

arXiv2016

Weyl semimetals as catalysts

The search for highly efficient and low-cost catalysts is one of the main driving forces in catalytic chemistry. Current strategies for the catalyst design focus on increasing the number and activity of local catalytic sites, such as the edge-sites of molybdenum disulfides in the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER). Here, we propose and demonstrate a different principle that goes beyond local site optimization by utilizing topological electronic states, a global property of the material, to spur catalytic activity. For HER, we have found excellent catalysts among the transition-metal monopnictides - NbP, TaP, NbAs, and TaAs - which were recently discovered to be topological Weyl semimetals. In addition to the free energy considerations we explore the role of metallicity, carrier mobility and topological electronic states for remarkable HER performance of these materials. The combination of robust topological surface states and large room temperature carrier mobility both of which originate from bulk Dirac bands of the Weyl semimetal appears to be the recipe for good HER catalyst. Our work provides a guiding principle for the discovery of novel catalysts from the emerging field of topological materials.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2016

Multiple Dirac cones at the surface of the topological metal LaBi

The rare-earth monopnictide LaBi exhibits exotic magneto-transport properties including an extremely large and anisotropic magnetoresistance. Experimental evidence for topological surface states is still missing although band inversions have been postulated to induce a topological phase in LaBi. By employing angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) in conjunction with $ab~initio$ calculations, we have revealed the existence of surface states of LaBi through the observation of three Dirac cones: two coexist at the corners and one appears at the center of the Brillouin zone. The odd number of surface Dirac cones is a direct consequence of the odd number of band inversions in the bulk band structure, thereby proving that LaBi is a topological, compensated semi-metal, which is equivalent to a time-reversal invariant topological insulator. Our findings provide insight into the topological surface states of LaBi's semi-metallicity and related magneto-transport properties.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2016

Compensated ferrimagnetic tetragonal Heusler thin films for antiferromagnetic spintronics

In recent years, antiferromagnetic spintronics has received much attention since ideal antiferromagnets do not produce stray fields and are much more stable to external magnetic fields compared to materials with net magnetization. Akin to antiferromagnets, compensated ferrimagnets have zero net magnetization but have the potential for large spin-polarization and strong out of plane magnetic anisotropy, and, hence, are ideal candidates for high density memory applications. Here, we demonstrate that a fully compensated magnetic state with a tunable magnetic anisotropy is realized in Mn-Pt-Ga based tetragonal Heusler thin films. Furthermore, we show that a bilayer formed from a fully compensated and a partially compensated Mn-Pt-Ga layer, exhibits a large interfacial exchange bias up to room temperature. The present work establishes a novel design principle for spintronic devices that are formed from materials with similar elemental compositions and nearly identical crystal and electronic structures. Such devices are of significant practical value due to their improved properties such as thermal stability. The flexible nature of Heusler materials to achieve tunable magnetizations, and anisotropies within closely matched materials provides a new direction to the growing field of antiferromagnetic spintronics.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2016

Large anomalous Hall effect driven by non-vanishing Berry curvature in non-collinear antiferromagnetic Mn3Ge

It is well established that the anomalous Hall effect that a ferromagnet displays scales with its magnetization. Therefore, an antiferromagnet that has no net magnetization should exhibit no anomalous Hall effect. Here we show that the non-collinear triangular antiferromagnet Mn3Ge exhibits a large anomalous Hall effect comparable to that of ferromagnetic metals; the magnitude of the anomalous conductivity is 500 per ohm per cm at 2 K and 50 per ohm per cm at room temperature. The angular dependence of the anomalous Hall effect measurements confirm that the small residual in-plane magnetic moment has no role in the observed effect. Our theoretical calculations demonstrate that the large anomalous Hall effect in Mn3Ge originates from a non-vanishing Berry curvature that arises from the chiral spin structure, and which also results in a large spin Hall effect, comparable to that of platinum. The present results pave the way to realize room temperature antiferromagnetic spintronics and spin Hall effect based data storage devices.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2016

Observation of pseudo two dimensional electron transport in the rock salt type topological semimetal LaBi

Topological insulators are characterized by an inverted band structure in the bulk and metallic surface states on the surface. In LaBi, a semimetal with a band inversion equivalent to a topological insulator, we observe surface state like behavior in the magnetoresistance. The electrons responsible for this pseudo two dimensional transport, however, originate from the bulk states rather topological surface states, which is witnessed by the angle dependent quantum oscillations of the magnetoresistance and ab initio calculations. As a consequence, the magnetoresistance exhibits strong anisotropy with large amplitude (~ 10^5 %).

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2016

Pressure-driven Superconductivity in Transition-metal Pentatelluride HfTe5

Layered transition-metal tellurides have attracted considerable attention because of their rich physics; for example, tungsten ditelluride WTe2 exhibits extremely large magnetoresistance; the tritelluride ZrTe3 shows a charge density wave transition at low temperature; and the pentatelluride ZrTe5 displays an enigmatic resistivity anomaly and large thermoelectric power. Recently some transition-metal tellurides are predicted to be quantum spin Hall insulators (e.g. ZrTe5 and HfTe5) or Weyl semimetals (e.g. WTe2 and MoTe2) and were subjected to intensive investigations. Here, we report on the discovery of superconductivity in hafnium pentatelluride HfTe5 under high pressure. We observe two structural phase transitions and metallization with superconductivity developing at around 5 GPa. A maximal critical temperature of 4.8 K is attained at a pressure of 20 GPa, and superconductivity persists up to the maximum pressure in our study (42 GPa). Theoretical calculations indicate that the superconductivity develops mainly in the Te atom layers at medium pressure and in the Te atom chains at high pressure.

cond-mat.supr-con↗

arXiv2016

Negative magnetoresistance without well-defined chirality in the Weyl semimetal TaP

Weyl semimetals (WSMs) are topological quantum states wherein the electronic bands linearly disperse around pairs of nodes, the Weyl points, of fixed (left or right) chirality. The recent discovery of WSM materials triggered an experimental search for the exotic quantum phenomenon known as the chiral anomaly. Via the chiral anomaly nonorthogonal electric and magnetic fields induce a chiral density imbalance that results in an unconventional negative longitudinal magnetoresistance, the chiral magnetic effect. Recent theoretical work suggests that this effect does not require well-defined Weyl nodes. Experimentally however, it remains an open question to what extent it survives when chirality is not well-defined, for example when the Fermi energy is far away from the Weyl points. Here, we establish the detailed Fermi surface topology of the recently identified WSM TaP via a combination of angle-resolved quantum oscillation spectra and band structure calculations. The Fermi surface forms spin-polarized banana-shaped electron and hole pockets attached to pairs of Weyl points. Although the chiral anomaly is therefore ill-defined, we observe a large negative magnetoresistance (NMR) appearing for collinear magnetic and electric fields as observed in other WSMs. In addition, we show experimental signatures indicating that such longitudinal magnetoresistance measurements can be affected by an inhomogeneous current distribution inside the sample in a magnetic field. Our results provide a clear framework how to detect the chiral magnetic effect.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2011

119Sn NMR probe of magnetic fluctuations in SnO2 nanoparticles

119Sn nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectra and spin-lattice relaxation rate (1/T1) in SnO2 nanoparticles were measured as a function of temperature and compared with those of SnO2 bulk sample. A 15% loss of 119Sn NMR signal intensity for the nano sample compared to the bulk sample was observed. This is indicative of ferromagnetism from a small fraction of the sample. Another major finding is that the recovery of the 119Sn longitudinal nuclear magnetization in the nano sample follows a stretched exponential behavior, as opposed to that in bulk which is exponential. Further, the 119Sn 1/T1 at room temperature is found to be much higher for the nano sample than for its bulk counterpart. These results indicate the presence of magnetic fluctuations in SnO2 nanoparticles in contrast to the bulk (non-nano) which is diamagnetic. These local moments could arise from surface defects in the nanoparticles.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2009

Superconductivity and quantum oscillations in crystalline Bi nanowires

While bulk bismuth (Bi) is a semimetal, we have found clear evidence of superconductivity in a crystalline 72 nm diameter Bi nanowire below 1.3 K. In a parallel magnetic field (H), the residual resistance of the nanowire below Tc displays periodic oscillations with H, and the period corresponds to the superconducting flux quantum. This result provides evidence that the superconductivity comes from the interface shell between Bi and the surface oxide. In a perpendicular H, the resistance in the superconducting state shows Shubnikov-de Haas (SdH) oscillations, a signature of a normal metal. These results indicate a novel coexistence of Bosonic and Fermionic states in the surface shell of nanowires.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2009

Proximity-induced superconductivity in nanowires: Mini-gap state and differential magnetoresistance oscillations

We study proximity-induced superconductivity in gold nanowires as a function of the length of the nanowire, magnetic field, and excitation current. Short nanowires exhibit a sharp superconducting transition, whereas long nanowires show nonzero resistance. At intermediate lengths, however, we observe two sharp transitions; the normal and superconducting regions are separated by what we call the mini-gap phase. Additionally, we detect periodic oscillations in the differential magnetoresistance. We provide a theoretical model for the mini-gap phase as well as the periodic oscillations in terms of the coexistence of proximity-induced superconductivity with a normal region near the center of the wire, created either by temperature or application of a magnetic field.

cond-mat.supr-con↗

arXiv2008

Evidence of local superconductivity in granular Bi nanowires fabricated by electrodeposition

An unusual enhancement of resistance (i.e., superresistivity) below a certain characteristic temperature Tsr was observed in granular Bi nanowires. This superresistive state was found to be dependent on the applied magnetic field (H) as well as the excitation current (I). The suppression of Tsr by magnetic field resembles that of a superconductor. The observed superresistivity appears to be related to the nucleation of local superconductivity inside the granular nanowire without long-range phase coherence. The phenomenon is reminiscent of the Bose-insulator observed previously in ultra thin two-dimensional (2D) superconducting films and 3D percolative superconducting films.

cond-mat.supr-con↗

arXiv2005

Suppression of superconductivity in nanowires by bulk superconductors

Transport measurements were made on a system consisting of a zinc nanowire array sandwiched between two bulk superconducting electrodes (Sn or In). It was found that the superconductivity of Zn nanowires of 40 nm diameter is suppressed either completely or partially by the superconducting electrodes. When the electrodes are driven into their normal state by a magnetic field, the nanowires switch back to their superconducting state. This phenomenon is significantly weakened when one of the two superconducting electrodes is replaced by a normal metal. The phenomenon is not seen in wires with diameters equal to and thicker than 70 nm.

cond-mat.supr-con↗