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S. Yazdi

Publications and source records attributed to S. Yazdi.

4 recordsLinked to original sources

3D Imaging of Complex Skyrmion and Hopf Topologies in an Extended Sample

Spin textures are key for emergent magnetic phenomena such as topological protection and underpin novel spintronic device paradigms based on racetrack memory, logic gates, and neuromorphic computing. Using a coherent diffractive imaging technique called vector ptycho-tomography, in combination with algorithms that are robust to noise, we image the 3D magnetic texture of skyrmion and Hopf topologies with no prior assumptions about the sample. This directly reveals experimentally for the first time an extended 3D skyrmion lattice, including the domain wall shape, topological charge, helicity, and Hopf index. Our findings demonstrate experimentally that dipole stabilized skyrmions in Fe/Gd multilayers exhibit barrel-shaped skyrmion tubes with a twisted helicity, transitioning from N$\'e$el-type winding at the surfaces to both clockwise and counterclockwise Bloch-type winding in the bulk, that can also be described as fractional hopfions. We image a lattice of 24 skyrmions with topological charge 1, average depth-dependent domain wall width of 23 to 40 nm, depth-dependent twisted helicity from $\pm$155$\deg$ to $\pm$30$\deg$, and fractional Hopf index of $\pm$0.3. Over 10 TB of data were analyzed to yield a fully-resolved 3D reconstruction over a >0.4 $\mu$m$^3$ volume, with high fidelity down to the Nyquist limit of 8 nm. This method fills a key gap in the current landscape of magnetic imaging by enabling high-resolution, element-specific 3D reconstructions of full-field extended spin textures - offering a new route for exploring the topological complexity of magnetic materials in three dimensions.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci

Singular charge fluctuations at a magnetic quantum critical point

Strange metal behavior is ubiquitous to correlated materials ranging from cuprate superconductors to bilayer graphene. There is increasing recognition that it arises from physics beyond the quantum fluctuations of a Landau order parameter which, in quantum critical heavy fermion antiferromagnets, may be realized as critical Kondo entanglement of spin and charge. The dynamics of the associated electronic delocalization transition could be ideally probed by optical conductivity, but experiments in the corresponding frequency and temperature ranges have remained elusive. We present terahertz time-domain transmission spectroscopy on molecular beam epitaxy-grown thin films of YbRh$_2$Si$_2$, a model strange metal compound. We observe frequency over temperature scaling of the optical conductivity as a hallmark of beyond-Landau quantum criticality. Our discovery implicates critical charge fluctuations as playing a central role in the strange metal behavior, thereby elucidating one of the longstanding mysteries of correlated quantum matter.

cond-mat.str-el

Measurement of the Penetration Depth and Coherence Length of MgB$_\text{2}$ in All Directions Using Transmission Electron Microscopy

We demonstrate that images of flux vortices in a superconductor taken with a transmission electron microscope can be used to measure the penetration depth and coherence length in all directions at the same temperature and magnetic field. This is particularly useful for MgB$_2$, where these quantities vary with the applied magnetic field and values are difficult to obtain at low field or in the $c$-direction. We obtained images of flux vortices from an MgB$_2$ single crystal cut in the $ac$ plane by focussed ion beam milling and tilted to $45^\circ$ with respect to the electron beam about its $a$ axis. A new method was developed to simulate these images which accounted for vortices with a non-zero core in a thin, anisotropic superconductor and a simplex algorithm was used to make a quantitative comparison between the images and simulations to measure the penetration depths and coherence lengths. This gave penetration depths $Λ_{ab}=100\pm 35$ nm and $Λ_c=120\pm 15$ nm at 10.8 K in a field of 4.8 mT. The large error in $Λ_{ab}$ is a consequence of tilting the sample about $a$ and had it been tilted about $c$, the errors would be reversed. Thus, obtaining the most precise values requires taking images of the flux lattice with the sample tilted in more than one direction. In a previous paper, we obtained a more precise value using a sample cut in the $ab$ plane. Using this value gives $Λ_{ab}=107\pm 8$ nm, $Λ_c=120\pm 15$ nm, $ξ_{ab}=39\pm 11$ nm and $ξ_c=35\pm 10$ nm which agree well with measurements made using other techniques. The experiment required two days to conduct and does not require large-scale facilities. It was performed on a very small sample: $30\times 15$ microns and 200 nm thick so this method could prove useful for characterising new superconductors where only small single crystals are available.

cond-mat.supr-con