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Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

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At least 1,081 records · Page 60
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2021

Nernst and Ettingshausen effects in gapped quantum materials

Here, we investigate whether there could exist topological invariants of gapped two-dimensional materials related to dissipationless thermoelectric transport at low temperatures. We give both macroscopic and microscopic arguments showing that thermoelectric transport coefficients vanish in the limit of zero temperature, and thus topological invariants arise only from the electric Hall conductance and the thermal Hall conductance. Our arguments apply to systems with arbitrarily strong interactions. We also show that there is no analog of the Thouless pump for entropy.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2022

Coupled Hubbard ladders at weak coupling: Pairing and spin excitations

The Hubbard model provides a simple framework in which one can study how certain aspects of the electronic structure of strongly interacting systems can be tuned to optimize the superconducting pairing correlations and how these changes affect the mechanisms giving rise to them. Here we use a weak-coupling random phase approximation to study a two-dimensional Hubbard model with a unidirectional modulation of the hopping amplitudes as the system evolves from the uniform square lattice to an array of weakly coupled two-leg ladders. We find that the pairing correlations retain their dominant d x 2 - y 2- wavelike structure and that they are significantly enhanced for a slightly modulated lattice. This enhancement is traced backed to an increase in the strength of the spin-fluctuation pairing interaction due to favorable Fermi surface nesting in the modulated system. We then use a random-phase approximation BCS framework to examine the evolution of the neutron resonance in the superconducting state. We find that it changes only weakly for moderate modulations, but breaks up into two distinct resonances at incommensurate wave vectors in the limit of weakly coupled ladders.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗
DOE OSTI2022

Gate-defined wires in twisted bilayer graphene: From electrical detection of intervalley coherence to internally engineered Majorana modes

Twisted bilayer graphene (TBG) realizes a highly tunable, strongly interacting system featuring superconductivity and various correlated insulating states. We establish gate-defined wires in TBG with proximity-induced spin-orbit coupling as (i) a tool for revealing the nature of correlated insulators and (ii) a platform for Majorana-based topological qubits. We show that the band structure of a gate-defined wire immersed in an intervalley coherent correlated insulator inherits electrically detectable fingerprints of symmetry breaking native to the latter. Surrounding the wire by a superconducting TBG region on one side and an intervalley coherent correlated insulator on the other further enables the formation of Majorana zero modes—possibly even at zero magnetic field depending on the precise symmetry-breaking order present. Our proposal not only introduces a highly gate-tunable topological qubit medium relying on internally generated proximity effects but can also shed light on the Cooper-pairing mechanism in TBG.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2022

Persistent exchange splitting in the chiral helimagnet $\mathrm{Cr}_{1/3}\mathrm{NbS}_2$

Here, using high-resolution angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy and ab initio calculation, we systematically investigate the electronic structure of the chiral helimagnet Cr 1/3 NbS 2 and its temperature evolution. The comparison with NbS 2 suggests that the electronic structure of Cr 1/3 NbS 2 is strongly modified by the intercalation of Cr atoms. Our ab initio calculation, consistent with experimental results, suggests strong hybridization between Nb- and Cr-derived states near the Fermi level. In the chiral helimagnetic state (below the Curie temperature, T c ), we observe exchange splitting of the energy bands crossing the Fermi level, which follows the temperature evolution of the magnetic moment, suggesting a strong interaction between the conduction electrons and Cr spin moments. Interestingly, the exchange splitting persists far above T c with weak temperature dependence, in drastic contrast to the itinerant ferromagnetism described by the Stoner model, indicating the existence of short-range magnetic order. Our results provide important insights into the interplay between the electronic structure and magnetism in Cr 1/3 NbS 2 , which is helpful for understanding the microscopic mechanism of chiral helimagnetic ordering.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
DOE OSTI2022

Quantum spin liquids bootstrapped from Ising criticality in Rydberg arrays

Arrays of Rydberg atoms constitute a highly tunable, strongly interacting venue for the pursuit of exotic states of matter. We develop a strategy for accessing a family of fractionalized phases known as quantum spin liquids in two-dimensional Rydberg arrays. We specifically use effective field theory methods to study arrays assembled from Rydberg chains tuned to an Ising phase transition that famously hosts emergent fermions propagating within each chain. This highly entangled starting point allows us to naturally access spin liquids familiar from Kitaev's honeycomb model—albeit from an entirely different framework. In particular, we argue that finite-range repulsive Rydberg interactions, which frustrate nearby symmetry-breaking orders, can enable coherent propagation of emergent fermions between the chains in which they were born. Delocalization of emergent fermions across the full two-dimensional Rydberg array yields a gapless Z 2 spin liquid with a single massless Dirac cone. Here, the Rydberg occupation numbers exhibit universal power-law correlations that provide a straightforward experimental diagnostic of this phase. We further show that explicitly breaking symmetries perturbs the gapless spin liquid into gapped, topologically ordered descendants: Breaking lattice symmetries generates toric-code topological order, whereas introducing Floquet-mediated chirality generates non-Abelian Ising topological order. In the toric-code phase, we analytically construct microscopic incarnations of non-Abelian defects, which can be created and transported by dynamically controlling the atom positions in the array. Our work suggests that appropriately tuned Rydberg arrays provide a cold-atoms counterpart of solid-state “Kitaev materials” and, more generally, it spotlights a different angle for pursuing experimental platforms for Abelian and non-Abelian fractionalization.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2022

Mana and thermalization: Probing the feasibility of near-Clifford Hamiltonian simulation

Quantum hydrodynamics is the emergent classical dynamics governing transport of conserved quantities in generic strongly interacting quantum systems. Here, recent matrix product operator methods [1,2] have made simulations of quantum hydrodynamics in 1+1D tractable, but they do not naturally generalize to 2+1D or higher, and they offer limited guidance as to the difficulty of simulations on quantum computers. Near-Clifford simulation algorithms are not limited to one dimension, and future error-corrected quantum computers will likely be bottlenecked by non-Clifford operations. We therefore investigate the non-Clifford resource requirements for simulation of quantum hydrodynamics using mana, a resource theory of non-Clifford operations. For infinite-temperature starting states, we find that the mana of subsystems quickly approaches zero, while for starting states with energy above some threshold the mana approaches a nonzero value. Surprisingly, in each case the finite-time mana is governed by the subsystem entropy, not the thermal state mana; we argue that this is because mana is a sensitive diagnostic of finite-time deviations from canonical typicality.

1-dimensional spin chains↗
DOE OSTI2022

Fractional quantum Hall valley ferromagnetism in the extreme quantum limit

Electrons' multiple quantum degrees of freedom can lead to rich physics, including a competition between various exotic ground states, as well as novel applications such as spintronics and valleytronics. Here we report magnetotransport experiments demonstrating how the valley degree of freedom impacts the fractional quantum states (FQHSs), and the related magnetic-flux-electron composite fermions (CFs), at very high magnetic fields in the extreme quantum limit when only the lowest Landau level is occupied. Unlike in other multivalley two-dimensional electron systems such as Si or monolayer graphene and transition-metal dichalcogenides, in our AlAs sample we can continuously tune the valley polarization via the application of in situ strain. We find that the FQHSs remain exceptionally strong even as they make valley polarization transitions, revealing a surprisingly robust ferromagnetism of the FQHSs and the underlying CFs. Our observation implies that the CFs are strongly interacting in our system. In conclusion, we are also able to obtain a phase diagram for the FQHS and CF valley polarization in the extreme quantum limit as we monitor transitions of the FHQSs with different valley polarizations.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗
DOE OSTI2023

How quantum phases on cylinders approach the two-dimensional limit

We consider the properties of $T$ = $0$ quantum phases of matter - especially superconducting and analogous spin-liquid phases - on infinite cylinders of width $L$ ⊥ and analyze the ways in which the $L$ ⊥ → ∞ (two-dimensional, 2d) limit is approached. This problem is interesting in its own right but is particularly important in the context of extrapolating accessible density matrix renormalization group (DMRG) results on model strongly interacting problems to the desired 2d limit. In conclusion, various methods for drawing firm conclusions about the quantum phases in 2d from relatively small $L$ ⊥ results are illustrated.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗
DOE OSTI2023

Effective dissipation rate in a Liouvillian-graph picture of high-temperature quantum hydrodynamics

At high temperature, generic strongly interacting spin systems are expected to display hydrodynamics: local transport of conserved quantities, governed by classical partial differential equations like the diffusion equation. I argue that the emergence of this dissipative long-wavelength dynamics from the system's unitary microscopic dynamics is controlled by the structure of the Liouvillian graph of the system's Hamiltonian, that is, the graph induced on Pauli strings by commutation with that Hamiltonian. The Liouvillian graph decomposes naturally into subgraphs of Pauli strings of constant diameter, and the coherent dynamics of these subgraphs determines the rate at which operator weight spreads to long operators. In conclusion, this argument provides a quantitative theory of the emergence of a dissipative effective dynamics from unitary microscopic dynamics; it also leads to an effective model with Hilbert space dimension linear in system size and exponential in the UV cutoff for diffusion.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗
DOE OSTI2024

Phase diagram of the one-dimensional t 1 - t 2 - J model: Ferromagnetism, triplet pairing, and charge and pair density waves

Here, we present a density matrix renormalization group (DMRG) study of an extended t-J model with hopping to the first and second neighbors -- the one dimensional t 1 -t 2 -J model. The full phase diagram as a function of the density n and exchange strength J, for both positive and negative values of t 2 , is obtained. For t 2 = -0.5 we observe that, in the strongly interacting region, Nagaoka Ferromagnetism (FM) is accompanied by a triplet pair density wave (PDW) upon doping. As the spin exchange J increases, a charge density wave (CDW) phase emerges and then gives way to singlet superconductivity (SC). This phase behaves as a singlet PDW with vanishing spacial average of the order parameter and a spin gap. When t 2 = 0.5, the physics is basically reminiscent of the conventional t-J model, undergoing a transition from a metallic to a SC phase as a function of J.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗
DOE OSTI2025

Particle-hole asymmetric phases in doped twisted bilayer graphene

Twisted bilayer graphene (TBG) has emerged as a paradigmatic platform for exploring the interplay between strong interactions in a multi-band system with nearly flat bands, while offering unprecedented control over the filling fraction of electron/hole carriers. Despite much theoretical work, developing a comprehensive ab initio model for this system has proven challenging due to the inherent trade-off between accurately describing the band structure and incorporating the interactions within the Hamiltonian. Here, we constructed an extended multi-orbital Hubbard model, and performed Hartree-Fock (HF) calculations to explore its phase diagram across commensurate fillings. We found several nearly-degenerate insulating states at charge neutrality, all of which exhibit orbital orders. We also observed that most of the Hartree–Fock ground states exhibit a generalized valley Hund’s-like rule, resulting in valley polarization. Importantly, we show that the incorporation of the intra-valley and inter-valley exchange interactions is crucial to properly stabilize the ordered symmetry-broken states. In agreement with experiments, we find significant particle-hole asymmetry, which underscores the importance of using particle-hole asymmetric models.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗
DOE OSTI2015

Heavy-impurity resonance, hybridization, and phonon spectral functions in Fe 1-x M x Si, M=Ir,Os

The vibrational behavior of heavy substitutional impurities (M=Ir,Os) in Fe 1-x M x Si (x = 0, 0.02, 0.04, 0.1) was investigated with a combination of inelastic neutron scattering (INS), transport measurements, and first-principles simulations. In this paper, our INS measurements on single-crystals mapped the four-dimensional dynamical structure factor, S(Q;E), for several compositions and temperatures. Our results show that both Ir and Os impurities lead to the formation of a weakly dispersive resonance vibrational mode, in the energy range of the acoustic phonon dispersions of the FeSi host. We also show that Ir doping, which introduces free carriers and increases electron-phonon coupling, leads to softened interatomic force-constants compared to doping with Os, which is isoelectronic to Fe. We analyze the phonon S(Q,E) from INS through a Green's function model incorporating the phonon self-energy based on first-principles density functional theory (DFT) simulations. Calculations of the quasiparticle spectral functions in the doped system reveal the hybridization between the resonance and the acoustic phonon modes. Finally, our results demonstrate a strong interaction of the host acoustic dispersions with the resonance mode, likely leading to the large observed suppression in lattice thermal conductivity.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗
DOE OSTI2017

Model of chiral spin liquids with Abelian and non-Abelian topological phases

In this article, we present a two-dimensional lattice model for quantum spin-1/2 for which the low-energy limit is governed by four flavors of strongly interacting Majorana fermions. We study this low-energy effective theory using two alternative approaches. The first consists of a mean-field approximation. The second consists of a random phase approximation (RPA) for the single-particle Green's functions of the Majorana fermions built from their exact forms in a certain one-dimensional limit. The resulting phase diagram consists of two competing chiral phases, one with Abelian and the other with non-Abelian topological order, separated by a continuous phase transition. Remarkably, the Majorana fermions propagate in the two-dimensional bulk, as in the Kitaev model for a spin liquid on the honeycomb lattice. We identify the vison fields, which are mobile (they are static in the Kitaev model) domain walls propagating along only one of the two space directions.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗
DOE OSTI2018

Deciphering complex features in STM images of O adatoms on Ag(110)

Recently it was demonstrated that atomic oxygen can cause the extraction of substrate atoms off metal surfaces thus generating chemically different active sites. For Ag(110) this process occurs when O 2 is dosed at 175 K leading, at low coverage, to the formation of single Ag vacancies. Vacancy creation proceeds thereby via the formation of O-Ag-O complexes, which involve a local reconstruction of the surface and ignite the disruption of the Ag substrate. In this paper, we report on the details of such processes and on the isolated structures formed by the O adatoms in the limit of very low coverage. Specifically, we employ scanning tunneling microscopy and density functional theory to unravel the complex structures of O/Ag(110) which are transiently present under specific reaction conditions. A variety of features such as isolated gray dots, sombreros, shallow gray and white structures oriented along [001] and [1$\bar{1}$0], gray stripes, and lozenges were identified and assigned to O adatoms in different configurations. The zigzag chains interact strongly with the STM tip and are easily disrupted, giving rise to highly mobile, sombrero-shaped, isolated O adatoms also far away from the scanned area, i.e., from the current injection spot. Around 200 K, not only Ag vacancies, which are mobile with anisotropic migration, can merge together into rather complex features, but also the mobile Ag atoms are trapped by O adatoms, thus facilitating the formation of an oxygen-decorated Ag chain along [001] which ultimately induces the well-known added-row reconstruction.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗
DOE OSTI2019

Quasiparticle relaxation dynamics in URu 2 - x Fe x Si 2 single crystals

We investigate quasiparticle relaxation dynamics in URu 2–x Fe x Si 2 single crystals using ultrafast optical-pump optical-probe (OPOP) spectroscopy as a function of temperature and Fe substitution (x), crossing from the hidden-order (HO) phase (x = 0) to the large-moment antiferromagnet (LMAFM) phase (x = 0 .12). Here, at low temperature, the dynamics for x = 0 and x = 0 .12 are consistent with the low-energy electronic structure of the HO and LMAFM phases that emerge from the high-temperature paramagnetic (PM) phase. In contrast, near the bicritical point separating HO and LMAFM (x = 0 .1), two transitions occur over a narrow temperature range (from 15.5–17.5 K). A PM to HO transition occurs at an intermediate temperature followed by a transition to the LMAFM phase at lower temperature. While the data at low temperatures are consistent with the expected coexistence of LMAFM and HO, the data in the intermediate temperature phase are not, and instead suggest the possibility of an unexpected coexistence of HO and PM. Additionally, the dynamics in the PM phase reflect the presence of a hybridization gap as well as strongly interacting spin and charge degrees of freedom. OPOP yields insights into meV-scale electrodynamics with sub-Kelvin temperature resolution, providing a complementary approach to study low-energy electronic structure in quantum materials.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗
DOE OSTI2019

Dynamic linear response quantum algorithm

The dynamic linear response of a quantum system is critical for understanding both the structure and dynamics of strongly interacting quantum systems, including neutron scattering from materials, photon and electron scattering from atomic systems, and electron and neutrino scattering by nuclei. Here, we present a general algorithm for universal quantum computers to calculate the dynamic linear response function with controlled errors and to obtain information about specific final states that can be directly compared to experimental observations.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2020

Pions in hot dense matter and their astrophysical implications

Here we study the role of pions in hot dense matter encountered in astrophysics. We find that strong interactions enhance the number density of negatively charged pions and that this enhancement can be calculated reliably for a relevant range of density and temperature by using the virial expansion. We assess the influence of pions and muons on the equation of state (EOS) and weak-interaction rates in hot dense matter. We find that thermal pions increase the proton fraction and soften the EOS. We also find that charged current weak reactions involving pions and muons $\bar{ν}_ μ + μ^– → π$ and $ν_μ + π^– → μ^–$ make an important contribution to the opacity of muon neutrinos. This could influence the dynamics of core-collapse supernovae and neutron-star mergers. Finally, we note that pion-nucleon reactions can alter the evolution of the proton fraction when weak interactions are not in equilibrium.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2020

Exploring the influence of bulk viscosity of QCD on dilepton tomography

The collective behavior of hadrons and of electromagnetic radiation in heavy-ion collisions has been widely used to study the properties of the quark-gluon plasma (QGP). Indeed this collectivity, as measured by anisotropic flow coefficients, can be used to constrain the transport properties of QGP. The goal of this contribution is to investigate the influence of the specific bulk viscosity (ζ/s) on dilepton production, both at Relativistic Heavy-Ion Collider and Large Hadron Collider energies. We explore the sensitivity of dileptons to dynamical features that bulk viscosity induces on the evolution of a strongly interacting medium, and highlight what makes them a valuable probe in the pursuit to also constrain ζ/s.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗