No abstract

Spin-orbit coupled systems generally break the spin rotation symmetry. However, for a model with equal Rashba and Dresselhauss coupling constants, and for the [110] Dresselhauss model, a new type of SU(2) spin rotation symmetry is discovered. This symmetry is robust against spin-independent disorder and interactions and is generated by operators whose wave vector depends on the coupling strength. It renders the spin lifetime infinite at this wave vector, giving rise to a persistent spin helix. We obtain the spin fluctuation dynamics at, and away from, the symmetry point and suggest experiments to observe the persistent spin helix.

According to Noether's theorem, 1 for every symmetry in nature there is a corresponding conservation law. For example, invariance with respect to spatial translation corresponds to conservation of momentum. In another well-known example, invariance with respect to rotation of the electron's spin, or SU(2) symmetry, leads to conservation of spin polarization. For electrons in a solid, this symmetry is ordinarily broken by spin-orbit (SO) coupling, allowing spin angular momentum to flow to orbital angular momentum. However, it has recently been predicted that SU(2) can be recovered in a two-dimensional electron gas (2DEG), despite the presence of SO coupling. 2 The corresponding conserved quantities include the amplitude and phase of a helical spin density wave termed the "persistent spin helix" (PSH) . 2 SU(2) is restored, in principle, when the strength of two dominant SO interactions, the Rashba 3 (α) and linear Dresselhaus 4 (β 1 ), are equal. This symmetry is predicted to be robust against all forms of spin-independent scattering, including electron-electron interactions, but is broken by the cubic Dresselhaus term (β 3 ) and spin-dependent scattering. When these terms are negligible, the distance over which spin information can propagate is predicted to diverge as α → β 1 . Here we observe experimentally the emergence of the PSH in GaAs quantum wells (QW's) by independently tuning α and β 1 . Using transient spin-grating spectroscopy 5 (TSG), we find a spin-lifetime enhancement of two orders of magnitude near the symmetry point. Excellent quantitative agreement with theory across a wide range of sample parameters allows us to obtain an absolute measure of all relevant SO terms, identifying β 3 as the main SU(2) violating term in our samples. The tunable suppression of spin-relaxation demonstrated in this work is well-suited for application to spintronics. 6, 7 SLAC-PUB-13935 SIMES,

The nature of the pseudogap phase of cuprate high-temperature superconductors is one of the most important unsolved problems in condensed matter physics. We studied the commencement of the pseudogap state at temperature T * using three different techniques (angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy, polar Kerr effect, and time-resolved reflectivity) on the same optimally-doped Bi2201 crystals. We observe the coincident onset at T * of a particle-hole asymmetric antinodal gap, a non-zero Kerr rotation, and a change in the relaxational dynamics, consistent with a phase transition. Upon further cooling, spectroscopic signatures of superconductivity begin to grow close to the superconducting transition temperature (T c ), entangled in an energy-momentum dependent fashion with the pre-existing pseudogap features.As complex oxides, cuprate superconductors belong to a class of materials which exhibit many broken-symmetry states; unravelling the relationship between superconductivity in the cuprates and other possible broken-symmetry states has been a major challenge of condensed matter physics. A possibly related issue concerns the nature of the pseudogap in the cuprates and its relationship with superconductivity. Angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) studies have shown that the pseudogap develops below a temperature T * near the Brillouin zone boundary while preserving a gapless Fermi arc near the zone diagonal (1). A key issue is the extent to which the pseudogap is a consequence of superconducting fluctuations (2-5), which should exhibit a rough particle-hole symmetry, or another form of (incipient) order (6-12), which typically should induce particle-hole asymmetric spectral changes. Candidate orders include various forms of density wave, nematic or unconventional magnetic orders that break different combinations of lattice translational (6-8, 13-19), rotational (6, 9, 15, 17, 20-22), and time-reversal (7, 9, 23-26) symmetries.We have focused on crystals of nearly optimally-doped (OP) Pb 0.55 Bi 1.5 Sr 1.6 La 0.4 CuO 6+δ (PbBi2201, T c = 38 K, T * = 132 ± 8 K) (27), and combined the ARPES measurements of the evolution of the band structure over a wide range of temperature, momentum and energy, with high-precision measurements of the polar Kerr effect (PKE) and time-resolved reflectivity (TRR).Bi2201 was chosen to avoid the complications resulting from bilayer splitting and strong antinodal bosonic mode coupling inherent to Bi 2 Sr 2 CaCu 2 O 8+δ (Bi2212) (1). Whereas ARPES is a surface probe, PKE enables us to monitor a bulk, thermodynamic (via the fluctuation-dissipation theorem) 2 property which has proven (28) to be a sensitive probe of the onset of a broken-symmetry state, and TRR gives complementary information on the bulk, near-equilibrium dynamics of the system. We will first analyze our ARPES data collected in different temperature regions. Above T * , PbBi2201 has a simple one-band band structure (right side of Fig. 1). For each cut in momentum space Fig. 1), the only distinct feature in the ...

Although Weyl fermions have proven elusive in high-energy physics, their existence as emergent quasiparticles has been predicted in certain crystalline solids in which either inversion or timereversal symmetry is broken [1][2][3][4]. Recently they have been observed in transition metal monopnictides (TMMPs) such as TaAs, a class of noncentrosymmetric materials that heretofore received only limited attention [5][6][7]. The question that arises now is whether these materials will exhibit novel, enhanced, or technologically applicable electronic properties. The TMMPs are polar metals, a rare subset of inversion-breaking crystals that would allow spontaneous polarization, were it not screened by conduction electrons [8][9][10]. Despite the absence of spontaneous polarization, polar metals can exhibit other signatures of inversion-symmetry breaking, most notably second-order nonlinear optical polarizability, χ (2) , leading to phenomena such as optical rectification and second-harmonic generation (SHG). Here we report measurements of SHG that reveal a giant, anisotropic χ (2) in the TMMPs TaAs, TaP, and NbAs. With the fundamental and second harmonic fields oriented parallel to the polar axis, the value of χ (2) is larger by almost one order of magnitude than its value in the archetypal electrooptic materials GaAs [11] and ZnTe [12], and in fact larger than reported in any crystal to date.The last decade has witnessed an explosion of research investigating the role of bandstructure topology, as characterized for example by the Berry curvature in momentum space, in the electronic response functions of crystalline solids [13]. While the best established example is the intrinsic anomalous Hall effect in time-reversal breaking systems [14], several nonlocal [15,16] and nonlinear effects related to Berry curvature generally [17,18]and in WSM's specifically [19,20] have been predicted in crystals that break inversion symmetry. Of these, the most relevant to this work is a theoretical formulation [21] of SHG in terms of the shift vector, which is a quantity related to the difference in Berry connection between two bands that participate in an optical transition. * Electronic address: liangwu@berkeley.edu † Electronic address: jworenstein@lbl.gov Fig. 1a and caption provide a schematic and description of the optical set-up for measurement of SHG in TMMP crystals . Figs. 1b,c show results from a (112) surface of TaAs. The SH intensity from this surface is very strong, allowing for polarization rotation scans with signal-to-noise ratio above 10 6 . In contrast, SHG from a TaAs (001) surface is barely detectable (at least six orders of magnitude lower than (112) surface). Below, we describe the use of the set-up shown in Fig. 1a to characterize the second-order optical susceptibility tensor, χ ijk , defined by the relation,As a first step, we determined the orientation of the high-symmetry axes in the (112) surface, which are the [1,-1,0] and [1,1,-1] directions. To do so, we simultaneously rotated the linear polarization of th...

An electron propagating through a solid carries spin angular momentum in addition to its mass and charge. Of late there has been considerable interest in developing electronic devices based on the transport of spin that offer potential advantages in dissipation, size and speed over charge-based devices. However, these advantages bring with them additional complexity. Because each electron carries a single, fixed value (- e) of charge, the electrical current carried by a gas of electrons is simply proportional to its total momentum. A fundamental consequence is that the charge current is not affected by interactions that conserve total momentum, notably collisions among the electrons themselves. In contrast, the electron's spin along a given spatial direction can take on two values, +/- [planck]/2 (conventionally upward arrow, downward arrow), so that the spin current and momentum need not be proportional. Although the transport of spin polarization is not protected by momentum conservation, it has been widely assumed that, like the charge current, spin current is unaffected by electron-electron (e-e) interactions. Here we demonstrate experimentally not only that this assumption is invalid, but also that over a broad range of temperature and electron density, the flow of spin polarization in a two-dimensional gas of electrons is controlled by the rate of e-e collisions.

In high-temperature superconductivity, the process that leads to the formation of Cooper pairs, the fundamental charge carriers in any superconductor, remains mysterious. We used a femtosecond laser pump pulse to perturb superconducting Bi(2)Sr(2)CaCu(2)O(8+δ) and studied subsequent dynamics using time- and angle-resolved photoemission and infrared reflectivity probes. Gap and quasiparticle population dynamics revealed marked dependencies on both excitation density and crystal momentum. Close to the d-wave nodes, the superconducting gap was sensitive to the pump intensity, and Cooper pairs recombined slowly. Far from the nodes, pumping affected the gap only weakly, and recombination processes were faster. These results demonstrate a new window into the dynamical processes that govern quasiparticle recombination and gap formation in cuprates.

When a polarized light beam is incident upon the surface of a magnetic material, the reflected light undergoes a polarization rotation1. This magneto-optical Kerr effect (MOKE) has been intensively studied in a variety of ferro- and ferrimagnetic materials because it provides a powerful probe for electronic and magnetic properties2, 3 as well as for various applications including magneto-optical recording4. Recently, there has been a surge of interest in antiferromagnets (AFMs) as prospective spintronic materials for high-density and ultrafast memory devices, owing to their vanishingly small stray field and orders of magnitude faster spin dynamics compared to their ferromagnetic counterparts5–9. In fact, the MOKE has proven useful for the study and application of the antiferromagnetic (AF) state. Although limited to insulators, certain types of AFMs are known to exhibit a large MOKE, as they are weak ferromagnets due to canting of the otherwise collinear spin structure10–14. Here we report the first observation of a large MOKE signal in an AF metal at room temperature. In particular, we find that despite a vanishingly small magnetization of M ~0.002 µB/Mn, the non-collinear AF metal Mn3Sn15 exhibits a large zero-field MOKE with a polar Kerr rotation angle of 20 milli-degrees, comparable to ferromagnetic metals. Our first-principles calculations have clarified that ferroic ordering of magnetic octupoles in the non-collinear Néel state16 may cause a large MOKE even in its fully compensated AF state without spin magnetization. This large MOKE further allows imaging of the magnetic octupole domains and their reversal induced by magnetic field. The observation of a large MOKE in an AF metal should open new avenues for the study of domain dynamics as well as spintronics using AFMs.