One of the most intensely studied scenarios of high-temperature superconductivity (HTS) postulates pairing by exchange of magnetic excitations. Indeed, such excitations have been observed up to optimal doping in the cuprates. In the heavily overdoped regime, neutron scattering measurements indicate that magnetic excitations have effectively disappeared, and this has been argued to cause the demise of HTS with overdoping. Here we use resonant inelastic X-ray scattering, which is sensitive to complementary parts of reciprocal space, to measure the evolution of the magnetic excitations in La(2-x)Sr(x)CuO4 across the entire phase diagram, from a strongly correlated insulator (x = 0) to a non-superconducting metal (x = 0.40). For x = 0, well-defined magnon excitations are observed. These magnons broaden with doping, but they persist with a similar dispersion and comparable intensity all the way to the non-superconducting, heavily overdoped metallic phase. The destruction of HTS with overdoping is therefore caused neither by the general disappearance nor by the overall softening of magnetic excitations. Other factors, such as the redistribution of spectral weight, must be considered.

Materials tuned to the neighbourhood of a zero temperature phase transition often show the emergence of novel quantum phenomena. Much of the effort to study these new effects, like the breakdown of the conventional Fermi-liquid theory of metals has been focused in narrow band electronic systems. Ferroelectric crystals provide a very different type of quantum criticality that arises purely from the crystalline lattice. In many cases the ferroelectric phase can be tuned to absolute zero using hydrostatic pressure or chemical or isotopic substitution. Close to such a zero temperature phase transition, the dielectric constant and other quantities change into radically unconventional forms due to the quantum fluctuations of the electrical polarization. The simplest ferroelectrics may form a text-book paradigm of quantum criticality in the solid-state as the difficulties found in metals due to a high density of gapless excitations on the Fermi surface are avoided. We present low temperature high precision data demonstrating these effects in pure single crystals of SrTiO 3 and KTaO 3 . We outline a model for describing the physics of ferroelectrics close to quantum criticality and highlight the expected 1/T 2 dependence of the dielectric constant measured over a wide temperature range at low temperatures. In the neighbourhood of the quantum critical point we report the emergence of a small frequency independent peak in the dielectric constant at approximately 2 K in SrTiO 3 and 3 K in KTaO 3 believed to arise from coupling to acoustic phonons. Looking ahead, we suggest that ferroelectrics could be used as systems in which to controllably build in extra complexity around the quantum critical point. For example, in ferroelectric or antiferroelectric materials supporting mobile charge carriers, quantum paraelectric fluctuations may mediate new effective electron-electron interactions giving rise to a number of possible states such as superconductivity.The study of quantum matter at low temperatures has given rise to a fascinating and often surprising catalogue of phenomena important to our understanding of nature 1 and to technological development 2 . In particular, the study of materials close to a continuous low temperature phase transition or so called quantum critical point forms an important branch of research within condensed matter physics. A chief reason for this is that close to such a transition, materials become highly degenerate and new states of matter are frequently found to emerge. In fact, it turns out that many materials end up being close to or within the quantum critical regime. This is because quantum critical phenomena can affect materials over a wide range of temperatures, pressures and other variables. In electrically conducting materials, the standard model of the metallic state, Landau's Fermi liquid theory is seen to breakdown close to the low temperature boundary between a magnetic and paramagnetic phase and is replaced with other forms of novel quantum liquid. For example, in some weakly magnet...

Cuprates and other high-temperature superconductors consist of two-dimensional layers that are crucial to their properties. The dynamics of the quantum spins in these layers lie at the heart of the mystery of the cuprates. In bulk cuprates such as La(2)CuO(4), the presence of a weak coupling between the two-dimensional layers stabilizes a three-dimensional magnetic order up to high temperatures. In a truly two-dimensional system however, thermal spin fluctuations melt long-range order at any finite temperature. Here, we measure the spin response of isolated layers of La(2)CuO(4) that are only one-unit-cell-thick. We show that coherent magnetic excitations, magnons, known from the bulk order, persist even in a single layer of La(2)CuO(4), with no evidence for more complex correlations such as resonating valence bond correlations. These magnons are, therefore, well described by spin-wave theory (SWT). On the other hand, we also observe a high-energy magnetic continuum in the isotropic magnetic response that is not well described by two-magnon SWT, or indeed any existing theories.

The electronic structure of Sr3CuIrO6, a model system for the 5d Ir ion in an octahedral environment, is studied through a combination of resonant inelastic x-ray scattering (RIXS) and theoretical calculations. RIXS spectra at the Ir L3-edge reveal an Ir t2g manifold that is split into three levels, in contrast to the expectations of the strong spin-orbit-coupling limit. Effective Hamiltonian and ab inito quantum chemistry calculations find a strikingly large non-cubic crystal field splitting comparable to the spin-orbit coupling, which results in a strong mixing of the j eff = 1 2 and j eff = 3 2 states and modifies the isotropic wavefunctions on which many theoretical models are based.

Measuring how the magnetic correlations evolve in doped Mott insulators has greatly improved our understanding of the pseudogap, non-Fermi liquids and high-temperature superconductivity. Recently, photo-excitation has been used to induce similarly exotic states transiently. However, the lack of available probes of magnetic correlations in the time domain hinders our understanding of these photo-induced states and how they could be controlled. Here, we implement magnetic resonant inelastic X-ray scattering at a free-electron laser to directly determine the magnetic dynamics after photo-doping the Mott insulator Sr2IrO4. We find that the non-equilibrium state, 2 ps after the excitation, exhibits strongly suppressed long-range magnetic order, but hosts photo-carriers that induce strong, non-thermal magnetic correlations. These two-dimensional (2D) in-plane Néel correlations recover within a few picoseconds, whereas the three-dimensional (3D) long-range magnetic order restores on a fluence-dependent timescale of a few hundred picoseconds. The marked difference in these two timescales implies that the dimensionality of magnetic correlations is vital for our understanding of ultrafast magnetic dynamics.

Vous avez des questions? Nous pouvons vous aider. Pour communiquer directement avec un auteur, consultez la première page de la revue dans laquelle son article a été publié afin de trouver ses coordonnées. Si vous n'arrivez pas à les repérer, communiquez avec nous à PublicationsArchive-ArchivesPublications@nrc-cnrc.gc.ca. Questions? Contact the NRC Publications Archive team atPublicationsArchive-ArchivesPublications@nrc-cnrc.gc.ca. If you wish to email the authors directly, please see the first page of the publication for their contact information. NRC Publications Archive Archives des publications du CNRCThis publication could be one of several versions: author's original, accepted manuscript or the publisher's version. / La version de cette publication peut être l'une des suivantes : la version prépublication de l'auteur, la version acceptée du manuscrit ou la version de l'éditeur. NRC Publications Record / Notice d'Archives des publications de CNRC:http://nparc.cisti-icist.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca/eng/view/object/?id=52705cc0-e17a-4735-a2b2-c0250cf7e564 http://nparc.cisti-icist.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca/fra/voir/objet/?id=52705cc0-e17a-4735-a2b2-c0250cf7e564 The electronic phase diagram of the weak spin-orbit Mott insulator (Sr 1−x La x Þ 3 Ir 2 O 7 is determined via an exhaustive experimental study. Upon doping electrons via La substitution, an immediate collapse in resistivity occurs along with a narrow regime of nanoscale phase separation comprised of antiferromagnetic, insulating regions and paramagnetic, metallic puddles persisting until x ≈ 0.04. Continued electron doping results in an abrupt, first-order phase boundary where the Néel state is suppressed and a homogenous, correlated, metallic state appears with an enhanced spin susceptibility and local moments. As the metallic state is stabilized, a weak structural distortion develops and suggests a competing instability with the parent spin-orbit Mott state. First-Order Melting of a Weak Spin-Orbit Mott Insulator into a Correlated Metal

We report the observation of a bulk charge modulation in La1.88Sr0.12CuO4 (LSCO) with a characteristic in-plane wave-vector of (0.236, ±δ), with δ=0.011 r.l.u. The transverse shift of the ordering wave-vector indicates the presence of rotated charge-stripe ordering, demonstrating that the charge ordering is not pinned to the Cu-O bond direction. On cooling through the superconducting transition, we find an abrupt change in the growth of the charge correlations and a suppression of the charge order parameter indicating competition between the two orderings. Orthorhombic LSCO thus helps bridge the apparent disparities between the behavior previously observed in the tetragonal "214" cuprates and the orthorhombic yttrium and bismuth-based cuprates and thus lends strong support to the idea that there is a common motif to charge order in all cuprate families.

We investigate the high-energy magnetic excitation spectrum of the high-T(c) cuprate superconductor Bi(2)Sr(2)CaCu(2)O(8+δ) (Bi-2212) using Cu L(3) edge resonant inelastic x-ray scattering. Broad, dispersive magnetic excitations are observed, with a zone boundary energy of ∼ 300 meV and a weak dependence on doping. These excitations are strikingly similar to the bosons proposed to explain the high-energy "kink" observed in photoemission. A phenomenological calculation of the spin response, based on a parametrization of the the angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy derived electronic structure and Yang-Rice-Zhang quasiparticles, provides a reasonable prediction of the energy dispersion of the observed magnetic excitations. These results indicate a possible unified framework to reconcile the magnetic and electronic properties of the cuprates and we discuss the advantages and disadvantages of such an approach.