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S. Thirupathaiah

Publications and source records attributed to S. Thirupathaiah.

At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

Spectroscopic evidence of topological phase transition in 3D Dirac semimetal Cd$_3$(As$_{1-x}$P$_x$)$_2$

We study the low-energy electronic structure of three-dimensional Dirac semimetal, Cd$_3$(As$_{1-x}$P$_x$)$_2$ [$x$ = 0 and 0.34(3)], by employing the angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES). We observe that the bulk Dirac states in Cd$_3$(As$_{0.66}$P$_{0.34}$)$_2$ are gapped out with an energy of 0.23 eV, contrary to the parent Cd$_3$As$_2$ in which the gapless Dirac states have been observed. Thus, our results confirm the earlier predicted topological phase transition in Cd$_3$As$_2$ with perturbation. We further notice that the critical P substitution concentration, at which the two Dirac points that are spread along the $c$-axis in Cd$_3$As$_2$ form a single Dirac point at $Γ$, is much lower [x$_c$(P)$<$ 0.34(3)] than the predicted value of x$_c$(P)=0.9. Therefore, our results suggest that the nontrivial band topology of Cd$_3$As$_2$ is remarkably sensitive to the P substitution and can only survive over a narrow substitution range, i.e., 0 $\leq$ x (P) $<$ 0.34(3).

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

Observation of Dirac surface states in the hexagonal PtBi2, a possible origin of the linear magnetoresistance

The nonmagnetic compounds showing extremely large magnetoresistance are attracting a great deal of research interests due to their potential applications in the field of spintronics. PtBi$_2$ is one of such interesting compounds showing large linear magnetoresistance (MR) in its both the hexagonal and pyrite crystal structure. We use angle-resolved photoelectron spectroscopy (ARPES) and density functional theory (DFT) calculations to understand the mechanism of liner MR observed in the hexagonal PtBi$_2$. Our results uncover for the first time linear dispersive surface Dirac states at the $\barΓ$-point, crossing Fermi level with node at a binding energy of $\approx$ 900 meV, in addition to the previously reported Dirac states at the $\bar{M}$-point in the same compound. We further notice from our dichroic measurements that these surface states show an asymmetric spectral intensity when measured with left and right circularly polarized light, hinting at a substantial spin polarization of the bands. Following these observations, we suggest that the linear dispersive Dirac states at the $\barΓ$ and $\bar{M}$-points are likely to play a crucial role for the linear field dependent magnetoresistance recorded in this compound.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

MoTe2 : An uncompensated semimetal with extremely large magnetoresistance

Transition-metal dichalcogenides (WTe$_2$ and MoTe$_2$) have drawn much attention, recently, because of the nonsaturating extremely large magnetoresistance (XMR) observed in these compounds in addition to the predictions of likely type-II Weyl semimetals. Contrary to the topological insulators or Dirac semimetals where XMR is linearly dependent on the field, in WTe$_2$ and MoTe$_2$ the XMR is nonlinearly dependent on the field, suggesting an entirely different mechanism. Electron-hole compensation has been proposed as a mechanism of this nonsaturating XMR in WTe$_2$, while it is yet to be clear in the case of MoTe$_2$ which has an identical crystal structure of WTe$_2$ at low temperatures. In this paper, we report low-energy electronic structure and Fermi surface topology of MoTe$_2$ using angle-resolved photoemission spectrometry (ARPES) technique and first-principle calculations, and compare them with that of WTe$_2$ to understand the mechanism of XMR. Our measurements demonstrate that MoTe$_2$ is an uncompensated semimetal, contrary to WTe$_2$ in which compensated electron-hole pockets have been identified, ruling out the applicability of charge compensation theory for the nonsaturating XMR in MoTe$_2$. In this context, we also discuss the applicability of the existing other conjectures on the XMR of these compounds.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

Temperature independent band structure of WTe2 as observed from ARPES

Extremely large magnetoresistance (XMR), observed in transition metal dichalcogendies, WTe$_2$, has attracted recently a great deal of research interests as it shows no sign of saturation up to the magnetic field as high as 60 T, in addition to the presence of type-II Weyl fermions. Currently, there has been a lot of discussion on the role of band structure changes on the temperature dependent XMR in this compound. In this contribution, we study the band structure of WTe$_2$ using angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) and first-principle calculations to demonstrate that the temperature dependent band structure has no substantial effect on the temperature dependent XMR as our measurements do not show band structure changes on increasing the sample temperature between 20 and 130 K. We further observe an electronlike surface state, dispersing in such a way that it connects the top of bulk holelike band to the bottom of bulk electronlike band. Interestingly, similar to bulk states, the surface state is also mostly intact with the sample temperature. Our results provide invaluable information in shaping the mechanism of temperature dependent XMR in WTe$_2$.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

Electrical, Thermal and Spectroscopic Characterization of Bulk Bi2Se3 Topological Insulator

We report electrical (angular magneto-resistance, and Hall), thermal (heat capacity) and spectroscopic (Raman, x-ray photo electron, angle resolved photo electron) characterization of bulk Bi2Se3 topological insulator, which is being is grown by self flux method through solid state reaction from high temperature (950C) melt and slow cooling (2C/hour) of constituent elements. Bi2Se3 exhibited metallic behaviour down to 5K. Magneto transport measurements revealed linear up to 400% and 30% MR at 5K under 14 Tesla field in perpendicular and parallel field direction respectively. We noticed that the magneto-resistance (MR) of Bi2Se3 is very sensitive to the angle of applied field. MR is maximum when the field is normal to the sample surface, while it is minimum when the field is parallel. Hall coefficient (RH) is seen nearly invariant with negative carrier sign down to 5K albeit having near periodic oscillations above 100K. Heat capacity (Cp) versus temperature plot is seen without any phase transitions down to 5K and is well fitted (Cp = gammaT + betaT3) at low temperature with calculated Debye temperature (ThetaD) value of 105.5K. Clear Raman peaks are seen at 72, 131 and 177 cm-1 corresponding to A1g1, Eg2 and A1g2 respectively. Though, two distinct asymmetric characteristic peak shapes are seen for Bi 4f7/2 and Bi 4f5/2, the Se 3d region is found to be broad displaying the overlapping of spin - orbit components of the same. Angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) data of Bi2Se3 revealed distinctly the bulk conduction bands (BCB), surface state (SS), Dirac point (DP) and bulk valence bands (BVB) and 3D bulk conduction signatures are clearly seen. Summarily, host of physical properties for as grown Bi2Se3 crystal are reported here.

cond-mat.str-el↗

Chemical exfoliation of MoS2 leads to semiconducting 1T' phase and not the metallic 1T phase

A trigonal phase existing only as small patches on chemically exfoliated few layer, thermodynamically stable 1H phase of MoS2 is believed to influence critically properties of MoS2 based devices. This phase has been most often attributed to the metallic 1T phase. We investigate the electronic structure of chemically exfoliated MoS2 few layered systems using spatially resolved (lesser than 120 nm resolution) photoemission spectroscopy and Raman spectroscopy in conjunction with state-of-the-art electronic structure calculations. On the basis of these results, we establish that the ground state of this phase is a small gap (~90 meV) semiconductor in contrast to most claims in the literature; we also identify the specific trigonal (1T') structure it has among many suggested ones.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

Unusual Dirac fermions on the surface of noncentrosymmetric $α$ - BiPd superconductor

Combining multiple emergent correlated properties such as superconductivity and magnetism within the topological matrix can have exceptional consequences in garnering new and exotic physics. Here, we study the topological surface states from a noncentrosymmetric $α$-BiPd superconductor by employing angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) and first principle calculations. We observe that the Dirac surface states of this system have several interesting and unusual properties, compared to other topological surface states. The surface state is strongly anisotropic and the in-plane Fermi velocity varies rigorously on rotating the crystal about the $y$-axis. Moreover, it acquires an unusual band gap as a function of $k_y$, possibly due to hybridization with bulk bands, detected upon varying the excitation energy. Coexistence of all the functional properties, in addition to the unusual surface state characteristics make this an interesting material.

cond-mat.supr-con↗

Experimental evidence for the importance of Hund's exchange interaction for the incoherence of the charge carriers in iron-based superconductors

Angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) is used to study the scattering rates of charge carriers from the hole pockets near Gamma in the iron-based high-Tc hole doped superconductors KxBa1-xFe2As2 x=0.4 and KxEu1-xFe2As2 x=0.55$ and the electron doped compound Ba(Fe1-xCox)2As2 x=0.075. The scattering rate for any given band is found to depend linearly on energy, indicating a non-Fermi liquid regime. The scattering rates in the hole-doped compound are considerably larger than those in the electron-doped compounds. In the hole-doped systems the scattering rate of the charge carriers of the inner hole pocket is about three times bigger than the binding energy indicating that the spectral weight is heavily incoherent. The strength of the scattering rates and the difference between electron and hole doped compounds signals the importance of Hund's exchange coupling for correlation effects in these iron-based high-Tc superconductors. The experimental results are in qualitative agreement with theoretical calculations in the framework of combined density functional dynamical mean-field theory.

cond-mat.supr-con↗

Effect of impurity substitution on band structure and mass renormalization of the correlated FeTe$_{0.5}$Se$_{0.5}$ superconductor

Using angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES), we studied the effect of the impurity potential on the electronic structure of FeTe$_{0.5}$Se$_{0.5}$ superconductor by substituting 10\% of Ni for Fe which leads to an electron doping of the system. We could resolve three hole pockets near the zone center and an electron pocket near the zone corner in the case of FeTe$_{0.5}$Se$_{0.5}$, whereas only two hole pockets near the zone center and an electron pocket near the zone corner are resolved in the case of Fe$_{0.9}$Ni$_{0.1}$Te$_{0.5}$Se$_{0.5}$, suggesting that the hole pocket having predominantly the $xy$ orbital character is very sensitive to the impurity scattering. Upon electron doping, the size of the hole pockets decrease and the size of the electron pockets increase as compared to the host compound. However, the observed changes in the size of the electron and hole pockets are not consistent with the rigid-band model. Moreover, the effective mass of the hole pockets is reduced near the zone center and of the electron pockets is increased near the zone corner in the doped Fe$_{0.9}$Ni$_{0.1}$Te$_{0.5}$Se$_{0.5}$ as compared to FeTe$_{0.5}$Se$_{0.5}$. We refer these observations to the changes of the spectral function due to the effect of the impurity potential of the dopants.

cond-mat.supr-con↗

Doping dependence and electron-boson coupling in the ultrafast relaxation of hot electron populations in Ba(Fe_{1-x}Co_x)_2As_2

Using femtosecond time- and angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy we investigate the effect of electron doping on the electron dynamics in Ba(Fe_{1-x}Co_x)_2As_2 in a range of 0 < x < 0.15 at temperatures slightly above the Néel temperature. By analyzing the time-dependent photoemission intensity of the pump laser excited population as a function of energy, we found that the relaxation times at 0 < E-E_F < 0.2 eV are doping dependent and about 100 fs shorter at optimal doping than for overdoped and parent compounds. Analysis of the relaxation rates also reveals the presence of a pump fluence dependent step in the relaxation time at E-E_F = 200meV which we explain by coupling of the excited electronic system to a boson of this energy. We compare our results with static ARPES and transport measurements and find disagreement and agreement concerning the doping-dependence, respectively. We discuss the effect of the electron-boson coupling on the energy-dependent relaxation and assign the origin of the boson to a magnetic excitation.

cond-mat.supr-con↗

Weak-coupling superconductivity in a strongly correlated iron pnictide

Iron-based superconductors have been found to exhibit an intimate interplay of orbital, spin, and lattice degrees of freedom, dramatically affecting their low-energy electronic properties, including superconductivity. Albeit the precise pairing mechanism remains unidentified, several candidate interactions have been suggested to mediate the superconducting pairing, both in the orbital and in the spin channel. Here, we employ optical spectroscopy (OS), angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES), ab initio band-structure, and Eliashberg calculations to show that nearly optimally doped NaFe$_{0.978}$Co$_{0.022}$As exhibits some of the strongest orbitally selective electronic correlations in the family of iron pnictides. Unexpectedly, we find that the mass enhancement of itinerant charge carriers in the strongly correlated band is dramatically reduced near the $Γ$ point and attribute this effect to orbital mixing induced by pronounced spin-orbit coupling. Embracing the true band structure allows us to describe all low-energy electronic properties obtained in our experiments with remarkable consistency and demonstrate that superconductivity in this material is rather weak and mediated by spin fluctuations.

cond-mat.supr-con↗

Electron correlation effects and scattering rates in Fe$_{1+y}$Te$_{1-x}$Se$_x$ superconductor

Using angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy we have studied the low-energy electronic structure and the Fermi surface topology of Fe$_{1+y}$Te$_{1-x}$Se$_x$ superconductors. Similar to the known iron pnictides we observe hole pockets at the center and electron pockets at the corner of the Brillouin zone (BZ). However, on a finer level, the electronic structure around the $Γ$- and $Z$-points in $k$-space is substantially different from other iron pnictides, in that we observe two hole pockets at the $Γ$-point, and more interestingly only one hole pocket is seen at the $Z$-point, whereas in $1111$-, $111$-, and $122$-type compounds, three hole pockets could be readily found at the zone center. Another major difference noted in the Fe$_{1+y}$Te$_{1-x}$Se$_x$ superconductors is that the top of innermost hole-like band moves away from the Fermi level to higher binding energy on going from $Γ$ to $Z$, quite opposite to the iron pnictides. The polarization dependence of the observed features was used to aid the attribution of the orbital character of the observed bands. Photon energy dependent measurements suggest a weak $k_z$ dispersion for the outer hole pocket and a moderate $k_z$ dispersion for the inner hole pocket. By evaluating the momentum and energy dependent spectral widths, the single-particle self-energy was extracted and interestingly this shows a pronounced non-Fermi liquid behaviour for these compounds. The experimental observations are discussed in context of electronic band structure calculations and models for the self-energy such as the spin-fermion model and the marginal-Fermi liquid.

cond-mat.supr-con↗

Interaction-induced singular Fermi surface in a high-temperature oxypnictide superconductor

In the family of iron-based superconductors, LaFeAsO-type materials possess the simplest electronic structure due to their pronounced two-dimensionality. And yet they host superconductivity with the highest transition temperature Tc=55K. Early theoretical predictions of their electronic structure revealed multiple large circular portions of the Fermi surface with a very good geometrical overlap (nesting), believed to enhance the pairing interaction and thus superconductivity. The prevalence of such large circular features in the Fermi surface has since been associated with many other iron-based compounds and has grown to be generally accepted in the field. In this work we show that a prototypical compound of the 1111-type, SmFe0.92Co0.08AsO, is at odds with this description and possesses a distinctly different Fermi surface, which consists of two singular constructs formed by the edges of several bands, pulled to the Fermi level from the depths of the theoretically predicted band structure by strong electronic interactions. Such singularities dramatically affect the low-energy electronic properties of the material, including superconductivity. We further argue that occurrence of these singularities correlates with the maximum superconducting transition temperature attainable in each material class over the entire family of iron-based superconductors.

cond-mat.supr-con↗

Non-Fermi-liquid scattering rates and anomalous band dispersion in ferropnictides

Angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) is used to study the band dispersion and the quasiparticle scattering rates in two ferropnictides systems. Our ARPES results show linear-in-energy dependent scattering rates which are constant in a wide range of control parameter and which depend on the orbital character of the bands. We demonstrate that the linear energy dependence gives rise to weakly dispersing band with a strong mass enhancement when the band maximum crosses the chemical potential. In the superconducting phase the related small effective Fermi energy favors a Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BCS)\,\cite{Bardeen1957}-Bose-Einstein (BE)\,\cite{Bose1924} crossover state.

cond-mat.supr-con↗

Isotropic multi-gap superconductivity in BaFe1.9Pt0.1As2 from thermal transport and spectroscopic measurements

Thermal conductivity, point contact spectroscopy, angle-resolved photoemission and Raman spectroscopy measurements were performed on BaFe1.9Pt0.1As2 single crystals obtained from the same synthesis batch in order to investigate the superconducting energy gap structure using multiple techniques. Low temperature thermal conductivity was measured in the superconducting state as a function of temperature and magnetic field, revealing an absence of quasiparticle excitations in the T=0 limit up to 15 T applied magnetic fields. Point-contact Andreev reflection spectroscopy measurements were performed as a function of temperature using the needle-anvil technique, yielding features in the conductance spectra at both 2.5 meV and 7.0 meV scales consistent with a multi-gap scenario. Angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy probed the electronic band structure above and below the superconducting transition temperature of T_c=23 K, revealing an isotropic gap of magnitude ~3 meV on both electron and hole pockets. Finally, Raman spectroscopy was used to probe quasiparticle excitations in multiple channels, showing a threshold energy scale of 3 meV below T_c. Overall, we find strong evidence for an isotropic gap structure with no nodes or deep minima in this system, with a 3 meV magnitude gap consistently observed and a second, larger gap suggested by point contact spectroscopy measurements. We discuss the implications that the combination of these results reveal about the superconducting order parameter in the BaFe1-xPtxAs2 system and how this relates to similar substituted iron pnictides.

cond-mat.supr-con↗

Observation of strong-coupling pairing with weakened Fermi-surface nesting at optimal hole doping in Ca$_{0.33}$Na$_{0.67}$Fe$_2$As$_2$

We report an angle-resolved photoemission investigation of optimally-doped Ca$_{0.33}$Na$_{0.67}$Fe$_2$As$_2$. The Fermi surface topology of this compound is similar to that of the well-studied Ba$_{0.6}$K$_{0.4}$Fe$_2$As$_2$ material, except for larger hole pockets resulting from a higher hole concentration per Fe atoms. We find that the quasi-nesting conditions are weakened in this compound as compared to Ba$_{0.6}$K$_{0.4}$Fe$_2$As$_2$. As with Ba$_{0.6}$K$_{0.4}$Fe$_2$As$_2$ though, we observe nearly isotropic superconducting gaps with Fermi surface-dependent magnitudes. A small variation in the gap size along the momentum direction perpendicular to the surface is found for one of the Fermi surfaces. Our superconducting gap results on all Fermi surface sheets fit simultaneously very well to a global gap function derived from a strong coupling approach, which contains only 2 global parameters.

cond-mat.supr-con↗

Why $T_c$ of (CaFeAs)$_{10}$Pt$_{3.58}$As$_8$ is twice as high as (CaFe$_{0.95}$Pt$_{0.05}$As)$_{10}$Pt$_3$As$_8$

Recently discovered (CaFe$_{1-x}$Pt$_x$As)$_{10}$Pt$_3$As$_8$ and (CaFeAs)$_{10}$Pt$_{4-y}$As$_8$ superconductors are very similar materials having the same elemental composition and structurally similar superconducting FeAs slabs. Yet the maximal critical temperature achieved by changing Pt concentration is approximately twice higher in the latter. Using angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy(ARPES) we compare the electronic structure of their optimally doped compounds and find drastic differences. Our results highlight the sensitivity of critical temperature to the details of fermiology and point to the decisive role of band-edge singularities in the mechanism of high-$T_c$ superconductivity.

cond-mat.supr-con↗