Empty f-states, Kondo insulators—or what?

Empty f-states several eV above the Fermi level may be of no interest, but they can be populated by optical means. However, when they are within thermal energy of the Fermi level, they can be populated at elevated temperatures and thus permit valence changes. We are investigating with various types of measurements, such as optical reflectivity, magneto-optics, photoemission, inverse photoemission, magnetic susceptibility, electrical resistivity and more such materials as LaS, LaSe, LaTe, CeO₂, CeF₄, YbN, TmS, Ce₃Bi₄Pt₃, Ce₃Sb₄Pt₃, and U₃Sb₄Pt₃. Some of these materials are superconductors, insulators, semimetals, metals, Kondo insulators or semiconductors.     

Topological Insulators on the Ruby Lattice with Rashba Spin-Orbit Coupling

We investigate a tight-binding model of the ruby lattice with Rashba spin-orbit coupling. We calculate the band structure of the lattice and evaluate the Z2 topological indices. According to the Z2 topological indices and the band structure, we present the phase diagrams of the lattice with different filling fractions. We find that topological insulators occur in some range of parameters at 1/6, 1/3, 1/2, 2/3 and 5/6 filling fractions. We analyze and discuss the characteristics of these topological insulators and their edge states.     

Topological insulators and C-algebras: Theory and numerical practice

We apply ideas from C^∗-algebra to the study of disordered topological insulators. We extract certain almost commuting matrices from the free Fermi Hamiltonian, describing band projected coordinate matrices. By considering topological obstructions to approximating these matrices by exactly commuting matrices, we are able to compute invariants quantifying different topological phases. We generalize previous two dimensional results to higher dimensions; we give a general expression for the topological invariants for arbitrary dimension and several symmetry classes, including chiral symmetry classes, and we present a detailed K-theory treatment of this expression for time reversal invariant three dimensional systems. We can use these results to show non-existence of localized Wannier functions for these systems.We use this approach to calculate the index for time-reversal invariant systems with spin–orbit scattering in three dimensions, on sizes up to 12³, averaging over a large number of samples. The results show an interesting separation between the localization transition and the point at which the average index (which can be viewed as an “order parameter” for the topological insulator) begins to fluctuate from sample to sample, implying the existence of an unsuspected quantum phase transition separating two different delocalized phases in this system. One of the particular advantages of the C^∗-algebraic technique that we present is that it is significantly faster in practice than other methods of computing the index, allowing the study of larger systems. In this paper, we present a detailed discussion of numerical implementation of our method.     

High quality CVD diamond: a Raman scattering and photoluminescence study

High quality synthetic diamonds were grown on single-crystal silicon by microwave plasma enhanced chemical vapour deposition (CVD). A careful optimisation of both the experimental setup and the growth parameters was necessary before that the achievement of the best results was made possible. The films were deposited using a CH₄-H₂ gas mixture at methane concentrations variable in the range 0.6-2.2%, while the substrate temperature was fixed at 750 ^°C. Raman spectroscopy and photoluminescence (PL) were utilised to monitor the quality of the deposited films and to study the spatial distribution of defects, respectively. Micro-Raman analysis shows that linewidths of the diamond peak lower than 2.4 cm^-1 can be easily measured at the growth surface, indicating that the crystalline quality of individual grains is comparable to that of the best natural diamonds. The excellent phase purity of the diamond microcrystals at the growth surface is witnessed by the complete absence of any non-diamond carbon feature and by a very weak luminescence background in the 1.6-2.4 eV spectral range. A worsening of the quality of the diamond particles is found moving from the growth surface towards the film-substrate interface. A photoluminescence feature at about 1.68 eV, commonly associated to Si impurities, is distinctly observed as the exciting laser beam is focused close to the interface. A progressive degradation of the global quality of the films is found with increasing methane concentration in the gas mixture, as witnessed by an increased PL background in the films grown at higher methane concentrations. Received 24 November 2000     

Spin-polarized transport through a time-periodic non-magnetic semiconductor heterostructure

Spin-dependent Floquet scattering theory is developed to investigate the photon-assisted spin-polarized electron transport through a semiconductor heterostructure in the presence of an external electric field. Spin-dependent Fano resonances and spin-polarized electron transport through a laser irradiated time-periodic non-magnetic heterostructure in the presence of Dresselhaus spin-orbit interaction and a gate-controlled Rashba spin-orbit interaction are investigated. The electric field due to laser along with the spin-orbit interactions help to get spin-dependent Fano resonances in the conductance, whereas the external bias can be appropriately adjusted to get a near 80% spin-polarized electron transmission through heterostructures. The resultant nature of the Floquet scattering depends on the relative strength of these two electric fields.     

Electrical and optical properties of CuIn5S8 single crystals

Summary Several transport and optical properties have been studied onn-type CuIn₅S₈ single crystals. The energy gap at 0 K was determined from the electrical measurements to be 1.4 eV. An anisotropy of the magnetoresistance effect was found and it was suggested that the minima of the conduction band were located at points along the [100] directions ink-space. An optical-absorption band was found in an infrared region of (1÷1.6) μm and was attributed to the transitions from the lowest conduction band situated along the [100] directions to an upper conduction band. Paper presented at the ?V International Conference on Ternary and Multinary Compounds?, held in Cagliari, September 14–16, 1982.     

Reprint of : Nanomagnet coupled to quantum spin Hall edge: An adiabatic quantum motor

The precessing magnetization of a magnetic islands coupled to a quantum spin Hall edge pumps charge along the edge. Conversely, a bias voltage applied to the edge makes the magnetization precess. We point out that this device realizes an adiabatic quantum motor and discuss the efficiency of its operation based on a scattering matrix approach akin to Landauer–Büttiker theory. Scattering theory provides a microscopic derivation of the Landau–Lifshitz–Gilbert equation for the magnetization dynamics of the device, including spin-transfer torque, Gilbert damping, and Langevin torque. We find that the device can be viewed as a Thouless motor, attaining unit efficiency when the chemical potential of the edge states falls into the magnetization-induced gap. For more general parameters, we characterize the device by means of a figure of merit analogous to the ZT value in thermoelectrics.     

Capacitance-voltage behaviour inp-type ɛ-GaSe single crystal ∥c at different temperatures

Summary  Capacitance-voltage measurements have been carried out onp-type ɛ-GaSe single crystal ∥c in the temperature range 300 to 360 K, with applied voltages of -1, 0 and +1 V. TheC-V measurements in this temperature range have shown a shift in capacitanceC and conductanceG to the higher values with an increase in temperature. The depletion layer widthW, the Debye length L_D and the doping densityN _α have been worked out and plots ofN _α vs. W have shown a decrease inW with an increase in temperature. The plots of L_D vs. N _α vary as 1/N_α^1/2, which gives N_αL_D ⋍ 3.3 × 10¹¹ charges/m² for doping density of 10¹⁶m⁻³. The values ofG at different temperatures have been used to obtain the activation energies, which are found to be ΔE ⋍ 0.11 eV for -1 and +1 V applied voltages, and ΔE ⋍ 0.06 eV for zero volt. The authors of this paper have agreed to not receive the proofs for correction.     

Gigantic stimulated Raman scattering in one-dimensional Mott-Hubbard insulators: A possible THz source

One-dimensional Mott-Hubbard insulators like Sr₂CuO₃, halogen-bridged Nickel chain compounds have orders-of-magnitude nonlinear optical properties compared to other one-dimensional organic or inorganic compounds. We show theoretically, that the stimulated Raman scattering susceptibility for such insulators could be order(s)-of-magnitude larger even compared to other nonlinear optical susceptibilities. The lowest two-photon state is at lower energy than the lowest one-photon state in some of these insulators. This leads to a potential for strong Stokes generation in the THz regime from these compounds. Our results and conclusions are based on exact numerical solution of finite size two-band extended Hubbard model.