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All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2022

Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev models and beyond: Window into non-Fermi liquids

In this work is a review of the Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK) model of compressible quantum many-body systems without quasiparticle excitations, and its connections to various theoretical studies of non-Fermi liquids in condensed matter physics. The review is placed in the context of numerous experimental observations on correlated electron materials. Strong correlations in metals are often associated with their proximity to a Mott transition to an insulator created by the local Coulomb repulsion between the electrons. The phase diagrams of a number of models of such a local electronic correlation are explored, employing a dynamical mean-field theory in the presence of random spin exchange interactions. Numerical analyses and analytical solutions, using renormalization group methods and expansions in large spin degeneracy, lead to critical regions that display SYK physics. The models studied include the single-band Hubbard model, the t–J model, and the two-band Kondo-Heisenberg model in the presence of random spin exchange interactions. Also examined are non-Fermi liquids obtained by considering each SYK model with random four-fermion interactions to be a multiorbital atom, with the SYK atoms arranged in an infinite lattice. Connections are made to theories of sharp Fermi surfaces without any low-energy quasiparticles in the absence of spatial disorder, obtained by coupling a Fermi liquid to a gapless boson; a systematic large-N theory of such a critical Fermi surface, with SYK characteristics, is obtained by averaging over an ensemble of theories with random boson-fermion couplings. Finally, an overview of the links between the SYK model and quantum gravity is presented, and the review ends with an outlook on open questions.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
DOE OSTI2025

Sharp spectroscopic fingerprints of disorder in an incompressible magnetic state

Disorder significantly impacts the electronic properties of conducting quantum materials by inducing electron localization and thus altering the local density of states and electric transport. In insulating quantum magnetic materials, the effects of disorder are less understood and can drastically impact fluctuating spin states like quantum spin liquids. In the absence of transport tools, disorder is typically characterized using chemical methods or by semi-classical modeling of spin dynamics. This requires high magnetic fields that may not always be accessible. Here, we show that magnetization plateaus—incompressible states found in many quantum magnets—provide an exquisite platform to uncover small amounts of disorder, regardless of the origin of the plateau. Using optical magneto-spectroscopy on the Ising-Heisenberg triangular-lattice antiferromagnet K 2 Co(SeO 3 ) 2 exhibiting a 1/3 magnetization plateau, we identify sharp spectroscopic lines, the fine structure of which serves as a hallmark signature of disorder. Through analytical and numerical modeling, we show that these fingerprints not only enable us to quantify minute amounts of disorder but also reveal its nature—as dilute vacancies. Remarkably, this model explains all details of the thermomagnetic response of our system, including the existence of multiple plateaus. Our findings provide a new approach to identifying disorder in quantum magnets.

Infrared spectroscopy↗
DOE OSTI2022

Dynamics of the collapse of a ferromagnetic skyrmion in a centrosymmetric lattice

We report time dependence of the size and chirality of a ferromagnetic skyrmion in a Heisenberg model with the magnetic field on a square lattice has been studied analytically and numerically. The lattice and the magnetic field generate strong time dependence of the skyrmion chirality. Due to nonlinearity, the lattice alone also generates strong intrinsic damping that leads to the skyrmion collapse via the emission of spin waves. In the absence of the magnetic field, the collapse is slow for a large skyrmion, but it becomes exponentially fast in the presence of the Landau-Lifshitz damping when the field is turned on. Magnons emitted by a collapsing skyrmion must have a discrete spectrum due to the quantization of the skyrmion magnetic moment.

2-dimensional systems↗
DOE OSTI2021

Field-induced intermediate ordered phase and anisotropic interlayer interactions in α-RuCl 3

In α-RuCl 3 , an external magnetic field applied within the honeycomb plane can induce a transition from a magnetically ordered state to a disordered state that is potentially related to the Kitaev quantum spin liquid. In zero field, single crystals with minimal stacking faults display a low-temperature state with in-plane zigzag antiferromagnetic order and a three-layer periodicity in the direction perpendicular to the honeycomb planes. In this work, we present angle-dependent magnetization, ac susceptibility, and thermal transport data that demonstrate the presence of an additional intermediate-field ordered state at fields below the transition to the disordered phase. Neutron-diffraction results show that the magnetic structure in this phase is characterized by a six-layer periodicity in the direction perpendicular to the honeycomb planes. Theoretically, the intermediate ordered phase can be accounted for by including spin-anisotropic couplings between the layers in a three-dimensional spin model. Together, this demonstrates the importance of interlayer exchange interactions in α-RuCl 3 .

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗
DOE OSTI2022

Spin-triplet pairing induced by near-neighbor attraction in the extended Hubbard model for cuprate chain

Abstract In quantum materials, the electronic interaction and the electron-phonon coupling are, in general, two essential ingredients, the combined impact of which may drive exotic phases. Recently, an anomalously strong electron-electron attraction, likely mediated by phonons, has been proposed in one-dimensional copper-oxide chain Ba 2− x Sr x CuO 3+ δ . Yet, it is unclear how this strong near-neighbor attraction V influences the superconductivity pairing in the system. Here we perform accurate many-body calculations to study the extended Hubbard model with on-site Coulomb repulsion U > 0 and near-neighbor attraction V < 0 that could well describe the cuprate chain and likely other similar transition-metal materials with both strong correlations and lattice effects. We find a rich quantum phase diagram containing an intriguing Tomonaga-Luttinger liquid phase — besides the spin density wave and various phase separation phases — that can host dominant spin-triplet pairing correlations and divergent superconductive susceptibility. Upon doping, the spin-triplet superconducting regime can be further broadened, offering a feasible mechanism to realize p -wave superconductivity in realistic cuprate chains.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2025

Pressure tuning of Kitaev spin liquid candidate Na 3 Co 2 SbO 6

The search for Kitaev’s quantum spin liquid in real materials has recently expanded with the prediction that honeycomb lattices of divalent, high-spin cobalt ions could host the dominant bond-dependent exchange interactions required to stabilize the elusive entangled quantum state. The layered honeycomb Na 3 Co 2 SbO 6 has been singled out as a leading candidate provided that the trigonal crystal field acting on Co 3d orbitals, which enhances non-Kitaev exchange interactions between $J$ eff = $\frac{1}{2}$ spin-orbital pseudospins, is reduced. Here we show that applied pressure leads to anisotropic compression of the layered structure, significantly reducing the trigonal distortion of CoO 6 octahedra. Ferromagnetic correlations between pseudospins are enhanced in the spin-polarized (3 Tesla) phase up to about 60 GPa. Higher pressures drive a high-spin to low-spin transition destroying the $J$ eff = $\frac{1}{2}$ moments required to map the spin Hamiltonian into Kitaev’s model. The spin transition strongly suppresses the low-temperature magnetic susceptibility and appears to stabilize a paramagnetic phase driven by frustration. The possible emergence of frustrated magnetism of localized $S$ = $\frac{1}{2}$ moments opens the door for exploration of novel magnetic quantum states in compressed honeycomb lattices of divalent cobaltates.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
DOE OSTI2020

Flat bands and ferrimagnetic order in electronically correlated dice-lattice ribbons

In this work, we study ribbons of the dice two-dimensional lattice (that we call “dice ladders”) known to have nontrivial topological properties, such as Chern numbers 2. Our main results are two fold. (1) Analyzing the tight-binding model in the presence of Rashba spin-orbit coupling and an external magnetic field, we observed that dice ladders qualitatively display properties similar to their two-dimensional counterpart all the way to the limit of only two legs in the short direction. This includes flat bands near the Fermi level, edge currents and edge charge localization near zero energy when open boundary conditions are used, two chiral edge modes, and a nonzero Hall conductance. (2) We studied the effect of Hubbard correlation U in the two-leg dice ladder using Lanczos and density matrix renormalization group techniques. We show that by increasing U the flat bands split without the need of introducing external fields. Moreover, robust ferrimagnetic order develops. Overall, our work establishes dice ladders as a promising playground to study the combined effect of topology and correlation effects, one of the frontiers in quantum materials.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗
DOE OSTI2021

Eigenstate Entanglement: Crossover from the Ground State to Volume Laws

For the typical quantum many-body systems that obey the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis (ETH), we argue that the entanglement entropy of (almost) all energy eigenstates is described by a single crossover function. The ETH implies that the crossover functions can be deduced from subsystem entropies of thermal ensembles and have universal properties. These functions capture the full crossover from the ground-state entanglement regime at low energies and small subsystem size (area or log-area law) to the extensive volume-law regime at high energies or large subsystem size. For critical one-dimensional systems, a universal scaling function follows from conformal field theory and can be adapted for nonlinear dispersions. We use it to also deduce the crossover scaling function for Fermi liquids in d > 1 dimensions. Here, the analytical results are complemented by numerics for large noninteracting systems of fermions in d ≤ 3 dimensions and have also been confirmed for bosonic systems and nonintegrable spin chains.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
DOE OSTI2021

Dynamical properties of a driven dissipative dimerized $S$ =1/2 chain

We consider the dynamical properties of a gapped quantum spin system coupled to the electric field of a laser, which drives the resonant excitation of specific phonon modes that modulate the magnetic interactions. Here, we deduce the quantum master equations governing the time-evolution of both the lattice and spin sectors, by developing a Lindblad formalism with bath operators providing an explicit description of their respective phonon-mediated damping terms. We investigate the nonequilibrium steady states (NESS) of the spin system established by a continuous driving, delineating parameter regimes in driving frequency, damping, and spin-phonon coupling for the establishment of physically meaningful NESS and their related nontrivial properties. Focusing on the regime of generic weak spin-phonon coupling, we characterize the NESS by their frequency and wave-vector content, explore their transient and relaxation behavior, and discuss the energy flow, the system temperature, and the critical role of the type of bath adopted. Our study lays a foundation for the quantitative modeling of experiments currently being designed to control coherent many-body spin states in quantum magnetic materials.

1-dimensional spin chains↗
DOE OSTI2022

Phenomenological theory of the magnetic 90° helical state

We explore a phenomenological phase diagram for the magnetic helical state with 90° turn angle between neighboring spins in the external magnetic field. Such a state is formed by the Eu spin layers in the superconducting iron arsenide RbEuFe 4 As 4 . The peculiarity of this spin configuration is that it is not realized in the standard Heisenberg model with bilinear exchange interactions. A minimum model allowing for such a state requires the biquadratic nearest-neighbor interaction term. In addition, in tetragonal materials, the 90° helix state may be stabilized by the in-plane fourfold anisotropy term, which also fixes helix orientation with respect to the crystal lattice. Such a system has a very rich behavior in the external magnetic field. The magnetic field induces the metamagnetic transition to the double-periodic state with the moment angles (α α -α,-α) with respect to the field for the four subsequent spins. The transition field to this state from the deformed helix is determined by the strength of biquadratic interaction. The transition is second-order for small biquadratic coupling and becomes first-order when this coupling exceeds the critical value. On the other hand, the aligned state at high magnetic field becomes unstable with respect to the formation of an incommensurate fan state, which transforms into the double-periodic state with decreasing magnetic field. The range of this incommensurate state near the saturation field is proportional to square of the biquadratic coupling. In addition, when the magnetic field is applied along one of four the equilibrium moment directions, the deformed helix state experience the first-order rotation transition at the field determined by the fourfold anisotropy.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2021

Spin-texture-driven electrical transport in multi-Q antiferromagnets

Abstract Unusual magnetic textures can be stabilized in f -electron materials due to the interplay between competing magnetic interactions, complex Fermi surfaces, and crystalline anisotropy. Here we investigate CeAuSb 2 , an f -electron incommensurate antiferromagnet hosting both single- Q and double- Q spin textures as a function of magnetic fields ( H ) applied along the c axis. Experimentally, we map out the field-temperature phase diagram via electrical resistivity and thermal expansion measurements. Supported by calculations of a Kondo lattice model, we attribute the puzzling magnetoresistance enhancement in the double- Q phase to the localization of the electronic wave functions caused by the incommensurate magnetic texture.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2021

Topological order in Mott insulators

Here in this commemorative issue for Phil Anderson, I reproduce parts of a joint unpublished paper that first got me thinking about topological order in Mott insulators. With Phil, we explored aspects of the momentum distribution function and the non-classical rotational inertia in the Bose Hubbard model close to the quantum phase transition. My interest on this question continued, and later in the article I take up the question of topological order in the Kitaev Mott insulator on the honeycomb lattice with bond-dependent interactions in a finite magnetic field. Kitaev obtained the exact solution for zero field that demonstrated an exotic Z 2 quantum spin liquid phase with topological order. In a finite magnetic field, we discovered a new intermediate U(1) gapless quantum spin liquid phase, sandwiched between the known gapped Kitaev spin liquid and a polarized phase, that harbors fractionalized neutral fermionic excitations, dubbed spinons, that remarkably form a Fermi surface in a Mott insulator.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
DOE OSTI2021

Magnetic exchange interactions in the van der Waals layered antiferromagnet MnPSe 3

Two-dimensional van der Waals compounds with magnetic ions on a honeycomb lattice are hosts to a variety of exotic behavior. The magnetic interactions in one such compound, MnPSe 3 , are investigated with elastic and inelastic neutron scattering. Magnetic excitations are observed in the magnetically ordered regime and persist to temperatures well above the ordering temperature, T N =74K, consistent with low dimensional magnetic interactions. The inelastic neutron scattering results allow a model spin Hamiltonian to be presented that includes dominant intralayer interactions of J 1ab =0.45 meV, J 2ab =0.03 meV, J 3ab =0.19 meV, consistent with theoretical predictions. Furthermore, despite the quasi-2D behavior, appreciable interlayer interactions of J c =0.031(5) meV are required to model the data. No evidence for anisotropy in the form of a spin gap is observed in the data collected. The measurements on MnPSe 3 are contrasted with those on MnPS 3 and reveal a large increase in the interlayer exchange interaction in MnPSe 3 that may stabilize the similar ordering temperatures in the bulk compounds.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗
DOE OSTI2020

Reconstruction and uncertainty quantification of lattice Hamiltonian model parameters from observations of microscopic degrees of freedom

The emergence of scanning probe and electron beam imaging techniques has allowed quantitative studies of atomic structure and minute details of electronic and vibrational structure on the level of individual atomic units. These microscopic descriptors, in turn, can be associated with local symmetry breaking phenomena, representing the stochastic manifestation of the underpinning generative physical model. In this work, we explore the reconstruction of exchange integrals in the Hamiltonian for a lattice model with two competing interactions from observations of microscopic degrees of freedom and establish the uncertainties and reliability of such analysis in a broad parameter-temperature space. In contrast to other approaches, we specifically specify a loss function inherent to thermodynamic systems and utilize it to estimate uncertainty in simulated realizations of different models. As an ancillary task, we develop a machine learning approach based on histogram clustering to predict phase diagrams efficiently using a reduced descriptor space. We further demonstrate that reconstruction is possible well above the phase transition and in the regions of parameter space when the macroscopic ground state of the system is poorly defined due to frustrated interactions. This suggests that this approach can be applied to the traditionally complex problems of condensed matter physics such as ferroelectric relaxors and morphotropic phase boundary systems, spin and cluster glasses, and quantum systems once the local descriptors linked to the relevant physical behaviors are known.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗
DOE OSTI2024

Anderson critical metal phase in trivial states protected by average magnetic crystalline symmetry

Transitions between distinct obstructed atomic insulators (OAIs) protected by crystalline symmetries, where electrons form molecular orbitals centering away from the atom positions, must go through an intermediate metallic phase. In this work, we find that the intermediate metals will become a scale-invariant critical metal phase (CMP) under certain types of quenched disorder that respect the magnetic crystalline symmetries on average. We explicitly construct models respecting average C 2z T, m, and C 4z T and show their scale-invariance under chemical potential disorder by the finite-size scaling method. Conventional theories, such as weak anti-localization and topological phase transition, cannot explain the underlying mechanism. A quantitative mapping between lattice and network models shows that the CMP can be understood through a semi-classical percolation problem. Ultimately, we systematically classify all the OAI transitions protected by (magnetic) groups Pm, P2', P4', and P6' with and without spin-orbit coupling, most of which can support CMP.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗
DOE OSTI2026

Superdiffusion resilience in Heisenberg chains with two-dimensional interactions on a quantum processor

Superdiffusive spin transport in the one-dimensional (1D) Heisenberg model is a key theoretical discovery in nonequilibrium quantum many-body physics. Although extensively studied in 1D systems, the breakdown and sustenance of superdiffusion in two-dimensional (2D) lattices with integrability-breaking terms, as found in real materials, remains an open question. To address this, we develop a toy model that extends the 1D Heisenberg model with a representative set of 2D interaction types and tunable strengths. Our model exhibits varying degrees of superdiffusion breakdown depending on the interaction type, spanning ballistic to diffusive regimes. We establish and justify a hierarchy of 2D interactions based on their resilience against superdiffusion breakdown: Heisenberg >𝑋⁢𝑋 > Ising. This precise control over the superdiffusive behavior also enables rigorous benchmarking of quantum hardware, and our simulations on IBM's Heron devices confirm the hardware's ability to accurately capture these many-body nonequilibrium phenomena. Overall, our results are relevant not only to simulating superdiffusion in real materials, such as the 1D Heisenberg compound KCuF3, which contains modest nonintegrable 2D terms, but also to extending superdiffusive behavior to larger 2D qubit lattices and other 2D materials.

Alagarsamy Manikandan, Keerthi Kumaran [ORNL]↗
DOE OSTI2021

First-principles characterization of the magnetic properties of Cu 2 (OH) 3 Br

Low-dimensional spin-1/2 transition metal oxides and oxyhalides continue to be at the forefront of research investigating nonclassical phases such as quantum spin liquids. In this work, we examine the magnetic properties of the oxyhalide Cu 2 (OH) 3 Br in the botallackite structure using first-principles density functional theory, linear spin-wave theory, and exact diagonalization calculations. This quasi-two-dimensional system consists of Cu 2+ S = 1/2 moments arranged on a distorted triangular lattice. Our exact diagonalization calculations, which rely on a first-principles-based magnetic model, generate spectral functions consistent with inelastic neutron scattering data. By performing computational experiments to disentangle the chemical and steric effects of the halide ions, we find that the dominant effect of the halogen ions is steric in the Cu 2 (OH) 3 X series of compounds.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗