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Shin-Ming Huang

Publications and source records attributed to Shin-Ming Huang.

62 records · Page 4Linked to original sources

Tunneling spectroscopy and Majorana modes emergent from topological gapless phases in high-Tc cuprate superconductors

We explore possible signatures for observing Majorana Fermions in the tunneling spectroscopy of high-Tc cuprate superconductors. We find that as long as the Rashba spin orbit interaction is in presence either through proximity effect due to an electrode made by heavy metal or by the intrinsic nature of cuprates, in addition to the Heisenberg spin exchange interaction, the Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya and spin dipole-dipole interactions are induced. As a result, $p$-wave superconductivity is induced with the gap function $d$-vector being not aligned with the internal magnetic field of the spin-orbit interaction. Most importantly, the ground state goes through transitions into gapless phases with split nodal points. The split nodal structure always results in Majorana modes for any interfaces that are not exactly in (100) or (010) directions. Hence for general interfaces, existence of Majorana bound edge states is a robust feature. Our results indicate that these Majorana modes would result in a small plateau in tunneling spectrum near zero bias peak and in 4 $π$ periodicity in typical SIS$'$ junctions . As a result, it is easy for a $π$-ring in tricrystal experiments to hold Majorana Ferimions and exhibit periods of two flux quanta in external magnetic fields. These phenomena may have been already observed in experiments and their connections to experimental results are discussed.

cond-mat.supr-con↗

A new type of Weyl semimetal with quadratic double Weyl fermions in SrSi2

We identify a Weyl semimetal state in an inversion breaking, stoichiometric compound strontium silicide, SrSi$_2$, with many new and novel properties that are distinct from the TaAs family. We theoretically show that SrSi$_2$ is a Weyl semimetal even without spin-orbit coupling and that, after the inclusion of spin-orbit coupling, two Weyl fermions stick together forming an exotic double Weyl fermion with quadratic dispersions and a higher chiral topological charge of 2. Moreover, we find that the Weyl nodes with opposite charges are located at different energies due to the absence of mirror symmetry in SrSi$_2$, leading to a unique topological quantum response that an external magnetic field can induce a dissipationless current. Our systematic results not only identify a much-needed robust Weyl semimetal candidate but also open the door to new topological Weyl physics that is not possible in the TaAs family of materials.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

Stability of Z$_2$ topological order in the presence of vacancy-induced impurity band

Although topological insulators (TIs) are known to be robust against non-magnetic perturbations and exhibit edge or surface states as their distinct feature, experimentally it is known that vacancies often occur in these materials and impose strong perturbations. Here we investigate effects of vacancies on the stability of Z$_{2}$ topological order using the Kane-Mele (KM) model as a prototype of topological insulator. It is shown that even though a vacancy is not classified as a topological defect in KM model, it generally induces a pair of degenerate midgap states only in the TI phase. We show that these midgap states results from edge states that fit into vacancies and are characterized by the same Z$_{2}$ topological order. Furthermore, in the presence of many vacancies, an impurity band that is degenerate with edge states in energy is induced and mixes directly with edge states. However, the Z$_{2}$ topological order persists and edge states exist between the impurity band and perturbed bulk bands until a phase transition occurs when Dirac cones near Dirac points are depleted. Our analyses indicate that the same scenario holds for point vacancies or line of vacancies in 3D TIs as well.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

Ferromagnetism and quantum anomalous Hall effect in one-side-saturated buckled honeycomb lattices

The recently synthesized silicene as well as theoretically discussed germanene are examples of buckled honeycomb structures. The buckled structures allow one to manipulate asymmetry between two underlying sublattices of honeycomb structures. Here by taking germanene as a prototype of buckled honeycomb lattices, we explore magnetism induced by breaking sublattice symmetry through saturating chemical bonds on one-side of the buckled honeycomb lattice. It is shown that when fractions of chemical bonds on one-side are saturated, two narrow bands always exist at half filling. Furthermore, the narrow bands generally support flat band ferromagnetism in the presence of the Hubbard $U$ interaction. The induced magnetization is directly related to the saturation fraction and is thus controllable in magnitude through the saturation fraction. Most importantly, we find that depending on the saturation fraction, the ground state of an one-side saturated germanene may become a quantum anomalous Hall (QAH) insulator characterized by a Chern number that vanishes for larger magnetization. The non-vanishing Chern number for smaller magnetization implies that the associated quantum Hall effect tends to survive at high temperatures. Our findings provide a potential method to engineer buckled honeycomb structures into high-temperature QAH insulators.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

Intrinsic high-temperature superconductivity in ternary iron selenides

We examine superconductivity in the mesoscopically mixed antiferromagnetic(AF) and superconducting (SC) phases of ternary iron selenides K$_{y}$Fe$_{2-x}$Se$_{2}$. It is shown that the interlayer hopping and AF order are key factors to determine $T_{c}$ of the SC phase. In general, the hopping will produce deformed Fermi surfaces (FS's) that tend to suppress superconductivity. However, contrary to the common expectation, we find that larger AF order actually results in larger SC order, which explains the observed relatively high $T_{c}$ in these phases. Furthermore our results indicate that by reducing the interlayer hopping appropriately, phase-separated K$_{y}$Fe$_{2-x}$Se$_{2}$ may exhibit its intrinsic SC phase in the two dimensional limit with a much higher $T_{c}$ ($\sim 65K$) than what has been observed.

cond-mat.supr-con↗

Unconventional superconducting gap via spin fluctuations in iron-vacancy ordered A$_{y}$Fe$_{2-x}$Se$_{2}$

Based on an effective 12-orbital tight-binding model, we examine the superconducting states induced by the antiferromagnetic fluctuations for iron-vacancy-ordered A$_{y}$Fe$_{2-x}$Se$_{2}$. It is shown that due to the broken reflection symmetry induced by the iron vacancies, new superconducting states with $C_{4h}$ symmetry emerge. In particular, we show that in the $C_{4h}$ symmetry, symmetric axes of the pairing momenta do not need to coincide with axes of the unit cell. As a result, in addition to the magnitude of the pairing gap, the relative orientation of the pairing wave function to the lattice forms another degree of freedom for characterizing the superconducting gap and can further help in gaining the condensation energy. Nonetheless, similar to other iron-based superconductors, the singlet ground state is still dominated by s-wave or d-wave, which are nearly degenerate with anisotropic gaps. Furthermore, s-wave and d-wave superconducting states are separated by a quantum critical point controlled by the Hund's rule coupling $J_{H}$.

cond-mat.supr-con↗

Effective tight-binding model for the iron vacancy ordered A$_{y}$Fe$%_{1.6}$Se$_{2}$

We investigate the electronic structure of the ternary iron selenide K$_{y}$% Fe$_{1.6}$Se$_{2}$ by considering the spatial symmetry of the $\sqrt{5}% \times \sqrt{5}$ vacancy ordered structure. Based on three orbitals of $% t_{2g}$, which are believed to play major physics in iron-based superconductors, an effective two-dimensional tight binding Hamiltonian is constructed with the vacancy ordered structure being explicitly included. It is shown that the constructed band model, when combined with generalized Hubbard interactions, yields a spin susceptibility which exhibits both the block-checkerboard antiferromagnetism instability and the stripe antiferromagnetism instability. In particular, for large Hund's rule couplings, the block-checkerboard antiferromagnetism wins over the stripe antiferromagnetism, in agreement with the observation in experiments. We argue that such a model with correct symmetry and Fermi surface structures should be the starting point to model K$_{y}$Fe$_{1.6}$Se$_{2}$. The spin fluctuations at $\mathbf{q}$=($π,π$) suggest that interblock fluctuations of spins might play an important role in the mechanism of superconductivity occurring in this system.

cond-mat.str-el↗