BiTeI is a giant Rashba spin splitting system, in which a noncentrosymmetric topological phase has recently been suggested to appear under high pressure. We investigated the optical properties of this compound, reflectivity and transmission, under pressures up to 15 GPa. The gap feature in the optical conductivity vanishes above p ∼ 9 GPa and does not reappear up to at least 15 GPa. The plasma edge, associated with intrinsically doped charge carriers, is smeared out through a phase transition at 9 GPa. Using high-pressure Raman spectroscopy, we follow the vibrational modes of BiTeI, providing additional clear evidence that the transition at 9 GPa involves a change of crystal structure. This change of crystal structure possibly inhibits the high-pressure topological phase from occurring. DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.112.047402 PACS numbers: 78.20.hb, 62.50.-p, 78.30.Am, 78.40.Fy Interest in the noncentrosymmetric semiconductor BiTeI surged when it was found that this compound hosts the largest known Rashba spin splitting in bulk form [1][2][3]. While this material is structurally related to the recently discovered bismuth chalcogenide topological insulators [4,5], it is an insulator of the common variety at ambient pressure. Recent first-principles band structure calculations suggested that BiTeI undergoes a transition to the topological insulating phase under pressure [6], through which BiTeI would become the first example of noncentrosymmetric topological insulator. Moreover, such a bandstructure topology change realizes a remarkable example of topological phase transition. While several examples of topological phase transitions occurring upon varying chemical composition have been reported in the literature [7][8][9], the pressure-induced transition in BiTeI would present the advantage of being controllable and reversible.Optical conductivity is well suited to probe the band structure of BiTeI under pressure. In this Letter, we determine the high-pressure optical properties by measuring transmission and reflectivity of BiTeI up to 15 GPa. We follow the optical gap under pressure and find that it decreases monotonically until 9 GPa. At this pressure the plasma edge associated with the doped carriers is strongly broadened due to a sudden increase of σ 1 ðωÞ at the plasma frequency. Above this pressure the gap feature in the optical conductivity has disappeared, and it does not reappear to the highest pressure reached. The high-pressure phase appears to be metallic. Using Raman spectroscopy, we observe a sudden change in the number and frequency of the vibrational modes at 9 GPa, which shows that a structural transition occurs at this pressure.Single crystals of BiTeI were grown by the floating zone method, starting from the stoichiometric ratio of metallic bismuth, tellurium and bismuth iodide. The unit cell of BiTeI is composed of triple layers, Te-Bi-I, stacked along the polar c-axis [1]. The triple layers are bound by a weak van der Waals interaction. The structure is described by the noncentrosymmetric space...

International audienceWe performed far-infrared optical spectroscopy measurements on the heavy fermion compound URu 2 Si 2 as a function of temperature. The light's electric-field was applied along the a-axis or the c-axis of the tetragonal structure. We show that in addition to a pronounced anisotropy, the optical conductivity exhibits for both axis a partial suppression of spectral weight around 12 meV and below 30 K. We attribute these observations to a change in the bandstructure below 30 K. However, since these changes have no noticeable impact on the entropy nor on the DC transport properties, we suggest that this is a crossover phenomenon rather than a thermodynamic phase transition

Background: Upstream open reading frames (uORFs) can down-regulate the translation of the main open reading frame (mORF) through two broad mechanisms: ribosomal stalling and reducing reinitiation efficiency. In distantly related plants, such as rice and Arabidopsis, it has been found that conserved uORFs are rare in these transcriptomes with approximately 100 loci. It is unclear how prevalent conserved uORFs are in closely related plants.

The temperature dependence of the complex optical properties of the three-dimensional topological insulator Bi2Te2Se is reported for light polarized in the a-b planes at ambient pressure, as well as the effects of pressure at room temperature. This material displays a semiconducting character with a bulk optical gap of Eg 300 meV at 295 K. In addition to the two expected infrared-active vibrations observed in the planes, there is additional fine structure that is attributed to either the removal of degeneracy or the activation of Raman modes due to disorder. A strong impurity band located at 200 cm −1 is also observed. At and just above the optical gap, several interband absorptions are found to show a strong temperature and pressure dependence. As the temperature is lowered these features increase in strength and harden. The application of pressure leads to a very abrupt closing of the gap above 8 GPa, and strongly modifies the interband absorptions in the mid-infrared spectral range. While ab initio calculations fail to predict the collapse of the gap, they do successfully describe the size of the band gap at ambient pressure, and the magnitude and shape of the optical conductivity.

We performed an experimental study of the temperature and doping dependence of the energy-loss function of the bilayer and trilayer bismuth cuprates family. The primary aim is to obtain information on the energy stored in the Coulomb interaction between the conduction electrons, on the temperature dependence thereof, and on the change of Coulomb interaction when Cooper pairs are formed. We performed temperature-dependent ellipsometry measurements on several Bi 2 Sr 2 CaCu 2 O 8−x single crystals: underdoped with T c ¼ 60, 70, and 83 K; optimally doped with T c ¼ 91 K; overdoped with T c ¼ 84, 81, 70, and 58 K; as well as optimally doped Bi 2 Sr 2 Ca 2 Cu 3 O 10þx with T c ¼ 110 K. Our first observation is that, as the temperature drops through T c , the loss function in the range up to 2 eV displays a change of temperature dependence as compared to the temperature dependence in the normal state. This effect at-or close to-T c depends strongly on doping, with a sign change for weak overdoping. The size of the observed change in Coulomb energy, using an extrapolation with reasonable assumptions about its q dependence, is about the same size as the condensation energy that has been measured in these compounds. Our results therefore lend support to the notion that the Coulomb energy is an important factor for stabilizing the superconducting phase. Because of the restriction to small momentum, our observations do not exclude a possible significant contribution to the condensation energy of the Coulomb energy associated with the region of q around ðπ; πÞ.