arXiv subjects

Suk Bum Chung

Publications and source records attributed to Suk Bum Chung.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Superconducting diode effect in magnetic superconductors realized by nonreciprocal domain-wall dynamics

A superconducting diode effect is shown to arise in ferromagnetic superconductors through the nonreciprocal dynamics of magnetic domain walls. Specifically, we show that current-driven dynamics of a magnetic domain wall under a certain external field can exhibit a nonreciprocal Walker breakdown, possessing two distinct direction-dependent critical currents beyond which the domain wall precesses continuously. In ferromagnetic superconductors, the constant rotation of a domain wall is shown to give rise to phase slips, opening up dissipation channels, whereby the nonreciprocal Walker breakdown is mapped to the superconducting diode effect. For the nonreciprocal Walker breakdown of a magnetic domain wall, we analytically examine its dependence on the magnetic field and the Gilbert damping and verify the theoretical results with micromagnetic simulations. We then extend the analysis to ferromagnetic superconductors by considering additional effects from the superconductivity and identify criteria for experimental conditions to realize the predicted superconducting diode effect. Our work demonstrates that topological defects, such as domain walls, in magnetic superconductors can serve as an intrinsic nanoscale platform for nonlinear nonreciprocal superconducting functionalities within a single homogeneous material, circumventing the need for complicated engineered heterostructures and thereby enabling the miniaturization of superconducting devices down to the nanometer scale that is challenging to achieve with conventional Josephson junctions.

cond-mat.supr-con↗

arXiv2025

Pedagogical approach to anomalous position and velocity

In this work, we discuss a pedagogical method in deriving the expressions for anomalous position and velocity. While we follow the steps used in optics in the derivation of the group velocity, we use Bloch wave functions instead of plane wave states. In comparison to the plane wave case, application of Bloch wave functions results in two additional terms in the expression of the group velocity: the Berry phase factor and anomalous position contributions. These two new terms with distinct origins eventually lead to the known anomalous velocity. Aiming for an intuitive understanding, we simulate the situation under an electric field using linear-combination-of-atomic-orbital states and visually demonstrate that the envelope function exhibits the transverse motion expected from an anomalous velocity.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2025

Tuning the Chern number of Kitaev quantum spin liquid

It is now well understood that non-Kitaev spin interactions can be added to the Kitaev quantum spin liquid by applying external fields. Recent years have seen intensive discussion on the possible phase transitions that these spin interactions induce. In this paper, we will show through the perturbation theory the possibility of accessing a gapped spin liquid phase with a higher Chern number through, in contrast to the cases studied in literature, a continuous phase transition. Such a transition may be induced by external tuning parameters such as electric field and hydrostatic pressure.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2025

Effects of Homogeneous Doping on Electron-Phonon Coupling in SrTiO3

Bulk n-type SrTiO3 (STO) has long been known to possess a superconducting ground state at an exceptionally dilute carrier density. This has raised questions about the applicability of the BCS-Eliashberg paradigm with its underlying adiabatic assumption. However, recent experimental reports have set the pairing gap to the critical temperature (Tc) ratio at the BCS value for superconductivity in Nb-doped STO, even though the adiabaticity condition the BCS pairing requires is satisfied over the entire superconducting dome only by the lowest branch of optical phonons. In spite of the strong implications these reports have on specifying the pairing glue, they have not proved sufficient in explaining the magnitude of the optimal doping. This motivated us to apply density functional theory to Nb-doped STO to analyze how the phonon band structures and the electron-phonon coupling evolve with doping. To describe the very low doping concentration, we tuned the homogeneous background charge, from which we obtained a first-principles result on the doping-dependent phonon frequency that is in good agreement with experimental data for Nb-doped STO. Using the EPW code, we obtain the doping-dependent phonon dispersion and the electron-phonon coupling strength. Within the framework of our calculation, we found that the electron-phonon coupling forms a dome in a doping range lower than the experimentally observed superconducting dome of the Nb-doped STO. Additionally, we examined the doping dependence of both the orbital angular momentum quenching in the electron-phonon coupling and the phonon displacement correlation length and found the former to have a strong correlation with our electron-phonon coupling in the overdoped region.

cond-mat.supr-con↗

arXiv2024

Phonon-mediated spin transport in quantum paraelectric metals

The concept of ferroelectricity is now often extended to include continuous inversion symmetry-breaking transitions in various metals and doped semiconductors. Paraelectric metals near ferroelectric quantum criticality, which we term `quantum paraelectric metals,' typically possess soft transverse optical phonons that have Rashba-type coupling to itinerant electrons in the presence of spin-orbit coupling. We find through the Kubo formula calculation that such Rashba electron-phonon coupling has a profound impact on electron spin transport. While the spin Hall effect arising from non-trivial electronic band structures has been studied extensively, we find here the presence of the Rashba electron-phonon coupling can give rise to spin current, including spin Hall current, in response to an inhomogeneous electric field even with a completely trivial band structure. Furthermore, this spin conductivity displays unconventional characteristics, such as quadrupolar symmetry associated with the wave vector of the electric field and a thermal activation behavior characterized by scaling laws dependent on the phonon frequency to temperature ratio. These findings shed light on exotic electronic transport phenomena originating from ferroelectric quantum criticality, highlighting the intricate interplay of charge and spin degrees of freedom.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2023

Current-driven motion of magnetic topological defects in ferromagnetic superconductors

Recent years have seen a number of instances where magnetism and superconductivity intrinsically coexist. Our focus is on the case where spin-triplet superconductivity arises out of ferromagnetism, and we make a hydrodynamic analysis of the effect of a charge supercurrent on magnetic topological defects like domain walls and merons. We find that the emergent electromagnetic field that arises out of the superconducting order parameter provides a description for not only the physical quantities such as the local energy flux density and the interaction between current and defects but also the energy dissipation through magnetic dynamics of the Gilbert damping, which becomes more prominent compared to the normal state as superconductivity attenuates the energy dissipation through the charge sector. In particular, we reveal that the current-induced dynamics of domain walls and merons in the presence of the Gilbert damping give rise to the nonsingular $4π$ and $2π$ phase slips, respectively, revealing the intertwined dynamics of spin and charge degrees of freedom in ferromagnetic superconductors.

cond-mat.supr-con↗

arXiv2023

Interaction of in-plane Drude carrier with c-axis phonon in $\rm PdCoO_2$

We performed polarized reflection and transmission measurements on the layered conducting oxide $\rm PdCoO_2$ thin films. For the ab-plane, an optical peak near $Ω$ $\approx$ 750 cm$^{-1}$ drives the scattering rate $γ^{*}(ω)$ and effective mass $m^{*}(ω)$ of the Drude carrier to increase and decrease respectively for $ω$ $\geqq$ $Ω$. For the c-axis, a longitudinal optical phonon (LO) is present at $Ω$ as evidenced by a peak in the loss function Im[$-1/\varepsilon_{c}(ω)$]. Further polarized measurements in different light propagation (q) and electric field (E) configurations indicate that the Peak at $Ω$ results from an electron-phonon coupling of the ab-plane carrier with the c-LO phonon, which leads to the frequency-dependent $γ^{*}(ω)$ and $m^{*}(ω)$. This unusual interaction was previously reported in high-temperature superconductors (HTSC) between a non-Drude, mid-infrared band and a c-LO. On the contrary, it is the Drude carrier that couples in $\rm PdCoO_2$. The coupling between the ab-plane Drude carrier and c-LO suggests that the c-LO phonon may play a significant role in the characteristic ab-plane electronic properties of $\rm PdCoO_2$ including the ultra-high dc-conductivity, phonon-drag, and hydrodynamic electron transport.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2022

Linear optical response from the odd parity Bardasis-Schrieffer mode in locally non-centrosymmetric superconductors

On the recent report of a magnetic field induced first order transition between an even-parity superconductivity and an odd-parity superconductivity in $\mathrm{CeRh_{2}As_{2}}$, the microscopic physics is still under investigation. However, if, in the vicinity of this transition, the coupling strengths of the even and odd pairing channels are comparable, a particle-particle excitonic collective mode referred to as the Bardasis-Schrieffer (BS) mode should generically exist below the pair-breaking continuum. This BS mode can couple to the light and thus affect the optical response of the superconductor, as it arises from a pairing channel with the parity opposite to that of the ground state pairs. Here, by using a generic bilayer model Hamiltonian for the electronic degree of freedom, which is globally centrosymmetric despite each layer being locally non-centrosymmetric, we study the change of the excitation gap of the BS mode with respect to the out-of-plane magnetic fields and demonstrate that its coupling to the light is possible even in the linear response regime. The linear coupling is attributed to the presence of multiple electronic bands, which is a generic feature of a bilayer system. Our result shows the microwave absorption as the signature of the BS mode, and hence a smoking gun signature of the parity-switching at the transition between two superconducting phases.

cond-mat.supr-con↗

arXiv2022

Theory of superconductivity in doped quantum paraelectrics

Recent experiments on Nb-doped SrTiO$_3$ have shown that the superconducting energy gap to the transition temperature ratio maintains the Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BCS) value throughout its superconducting dome. Motivated by these and related studies, we show that the Cooper pairing mediated by a single soft transverse-optical phonon is the most natural mechanism for such a superconducting dome given experimental constraints, and present the microscopic theory for this pairing mechanism. Furthermore, we show that this mechanism is consistent with the $T^2$ resistivity in the normal state. Lastly, we discuss what physical insights SrTiO$_3$ provides for superconductivity in other quantum paraelectrics such as KTaO$_3$.

cond-mat.supr-con↗

arXiv2022

Topological multiband s-wave superconductivity in coupled multifold fermions

We study three-dimensional time-reversal-invariant topological superconductivity in noncentrosymmetric materials such as RhSi, CoSi, and AlPt which host coupled multifold nodes energetically split by the spin-orbit coupling at the same time-reversal-invariant momentum (TRIM). The topological superconductivity arises from the $s_{+} \oplus s_{-}$ gap function, which is $\boldsymbol{k}$ independent, but with opposite signs for the two nodes split at the same TRIM. We consider various electron-electron interactions in the tight-binding model for RhSi and find that the topological superconducting phase supporting a surface Majorana cone and topological nodal rings is favored in a wide range of interaction parameters.

cond-mat.supr-con↗

arXiv2021

Emergence of Topological Superconductivity in Doped Topological Dirac Semimetals under Symmetry-Lowering Lattice Distortions

Recently, unconventional superconductivity having a zero-bias conductance peak is reported in doped topological Dirac semimetal (DSM) with lattice distortion. Motivated by the experiments, we theoretically study the possible symmetry-lowering lattice distortions and their effects on the emergence of unconventional superconductivity in doped topological DSM. We find four types of symmetry-lowering lattice distortions that reproduce the crystal symmetries relevant to experiments from the group-theoretical analysis. Considering inter-orbital and intra-orbital electron density-density interactions, we calculate superconducting phase diagrams. We find that the lattice distortions can induce unconventional superconductivity hosting gapless surface Andreev bound states (SABS). Depending on the lattice distortions and superconducting pairing interactions, the unconventional inversion-odd-parity superconductivity can be either topological nodal superconductivity hosting a flat SABS or topological crystalline superconductivity hosting a gapless SABS. Remarkably, the lattice distortions increase the superconducting critical temperature, which is consistent with the experiments. Our work opens a pathway to explore and control pressure-induced topological superconductivity in doped topological semimetals.

cond-mat.supr-con↗

arXiv2021

Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless transition transport in spin-triplet superconductor

As the spin-triplet superconductivity arises from the condensation of spinful Cooper pairs, its full characterization requires not only charge ordering, but also spin ordering. For a two-dimensional (2D) easy-plane spin-triplet superconductor, this naïvely seems to suggest the possibility of two distinct Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless (BKT) phase transitions, one in the charge sector and the other in the spin sector. However, it has been recognized that there are actually three possible BKT transitions, involving the deconfinement of, respectively, the conventional vortices, the merons and the half-quantum vortices with vorticity in both the charge and the spin current. We show how all the transitions can be characterized by the relation between the voltage drop and the spin-polarized current bias. This study reveals that, due to the hitherto unexamined transport of half-quantum vortices, there is an upper bound on the spin supercurrent in a quasi-long range ordered spin-triplet superconductor, which provides a means for half-quantum vortex detection via transport measurements and deeper understanding of fluctuation effects in superconductor-based spintronic devices.

cond-mat.supr-con↗

arXiv2021

Low-density superconductivity in SrTiO$_3$ bounded by the adiabatic criterion

SrTiO$_3$ exhibits superconductivity for carrier densities $10^{19}-10^{21}$ cm$^{-3}$. Across this range, the Fermi level traverses a number of vibrational modes in the system, making it ideal for studying dilute superconductivity. We use high-resolution planar-tunneling spectroscopy to probe chemically-doped SrTiO$_3$ across the superconducting dome. The over-doped superconducting boundary aligns, with surprising precision, to the Fermi energy crossing the Debye energy. Superconductivity emerges with decreasing density, maintaining throughout the Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BCS) gap to transition-temperature ratio, despite being in the anti-adiabatic regime. At lowest superconducting densities, the lone remaining adiabatic phonon van Hove singularity is the soft transverse-optic mode, associated with the ferroelectric instability. We suggest a scenario for pairing mediated by this mode in the presence of spin-orbit coupling, which naturally accounts for the superconducting dome and BCS ratio.

cond-mat.supr-con↗

arXiv2020

Transport signature of the magnetic Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless transition

Motivated by recent experimental progress in 2D magnetism, we theoretically study spin transport in 2D easy-plane magnets at finite temperatures across the Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless (BKT) phase transition, by developing a duality mapping to the 2+1D electromagnetism with the full account of spin's finite lifetime. In particular, we find that the non-conservation of spin gives rise to a distinct signature across the BKT transition, with the spin current decaying with distance power-law (exponentially) below (above) the transition; this is detectable in the proposed experiment with NiPS$_3$ and CrCl$_3$.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2020

Topological orders competing for the Dirac surface state in FeSeTe surfaces

FeSeTe has recently emerged as a leading candidate material for the two-dimensional topological superconductivity (TSC). Two reasons for the excitement are the high $T_c$ of the system and the fact that the Majorana zero modes (MZMs) inside the vortex cores live on the exposed surface rather than at the interface of a heterostructure as in the proximitized topological insulators. However, the recent scanning tunneling spectroscopy data have shown that, contrary to the theoretical expectation, the MZM does not exist inside every vortex core. Hence there are ``full'' vortices with MZMs and ``empty'' vortices without MZMs. Moreover the fraction of ``empty'' vortices increase with an increase in the magnetic field. We propose the possibility of two distinct gapped states competing for the topological surface states in FeSeTe: the TSC and half quantum anomalous Hall (hQAH). The latter is promoted by magnetic field through the alignment of magnetic impurities such as Fe interstitials. When hQAH takes over the topological surface state, the surface will become transparent to scanning tunneling microscopy and the nature of the vortex in such region will appear identical to what is expected of the vortices in the bulk, i.e., empty. Unmistakable signature of the proposed mechanism for empty vortices will be the existance of chiral Majorana modes(CMM) at the domain wall between a hQAH region and a TSC region. Such CMM should be observable by observing local density of states along a line connecting an empty vortex to a nearby full vortex.

cond-mat.supr-con↗

arXiv2019

Magnon topology and thermal Hall effect in trimerized triangular lattice antiferromagnet

The non-trivial magnon band topology and its consequent responses have been extensively studied in two-dimensional magnetisms. However, the triangular lattice antiferromagnet (TLAF), the best-known frustrated two-dimensional magnet, has received less attention than the closely related Kagome system, because of the spin-chirality cancellation in the umbrella ground state of the undistorted TLAF. In this work, we study the band topology and the thermal Hall effect (THE) of the TLAF with (anti-)trimerization distortion under the external perpendicular magnetic field using the linearized spin wave theory. We show that the spin-chirality cancellation is removed in such case, giving rise to the non-trivial magnon band topology and the finite THE. Moreover, the magnon bands exhibit band topology transitions tuned by the magnetic field. We demonstrate that such transitions are accompanied by the logarithmic divergence of the first derivative of the thermal Hall conductivity. Finally, we examine the above consequences by calculating the THE in the hexagonal manganite YMnO$_3$, well known to have anti-trimerization.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2019

Topological superconductivity from transverse optical phonons in oxide heterostructures

A topological superconductor features at its boundaries and vortices Majorana fermions, which are potentially applicable for topological quantum computations. The scarcity of the known experimentally verified physical systems with topological superconductivity, time-reversal invariant ones in particular, is giving rise to a strong demand for identifying new candidate materials. In this research, we study a heterostructure consisting of a transition metal oxide two-dimensional electron gas (2DEG) sandwiched by insulators near the paraelectric (PE) / ferroelectric (FE) phase transition. Its relevant characteristics is the combination of the transition metal spin-orbit coupling and the soft odd-parity phonons arising from the ferroelectric fluctuation; it gives rise to the fluctuating Rashba effect, which can mediate the pairing interaction for time-reversal invariant topological superconductivity. As the PE / FE phase transition can be driven by applying strain on the heterostructure, this system provides a tunable electron-phonon coupling. Through the first-principle calculations on the (001) [BaOsO3][BaTiO3]4, we find such electron-phonon coupling to be strong over a wide range of applied tensile bi-axial strain in the monolayer BaOsO3 sandwiched between the (001) BaTiO3, hence qualifying it as a good candidate material. Furthermore, the stability of topological superconductivity in this material is enhanced by its orbital physics that gives rise to the anisotropic dispersion.

cond-mat.supr-con↗

arXiv2019

A non-perturbative field theory approach for the Kondo effect: Emergence of an extra dimension and its implication for the holographic duality conjecture

Implementing Wilsonian renormalization group transformations in an iterative way, we develop a non-perturbative field theoretical framework, which takes into account all-loop quantum corrections organized in the $1/N$ expansion, where $N$ represents the flavor number of quantum fields. The resulting classical field theory is given by an effective Landau-Ginzburg theory for a local order parameter field, which appears in one-dimensional higher spacetime. We claim that such all-loop quantum corrections are introduced into an equation of motion for the order parameter field through the evolution in the emergent extra dimension. Based on this non-perturbative theoretical framework, we solve the Kondo effect, where the quantum mechanics problem in the projective formulation is mapped into a Landau-Ginzburg field theory for the hybridization order parameter field with an emergent extra dimension. We confirm the non-perturbative nature of this field theoretical framework. Intriguingly, we show that the Wilsonian renormalization group method can explain non-perturbative thermodynamic properties of an impurity consistent with the Bethe ansatz solutions. Finally, we speculate how our non-perturbative field theoretical framework can be connected with the AdS$_{d+2}$/CFT$_{d+1}$ duality conjecture.

hep-th↗