Liquide de Fermi | EPFL Graph Search

Un liquide de Fermi est un état quantique de la matière, observé à basse température pour la plupart des solides cristallins bi- et tridimensionnels et dans l'Hélium 3 liquide. Il se caractérise macroscopiquement par des propriétés thermodynamiques, magnétiques, et de transport (ex : conductivité électrique) universelles et correspondant à celles d'un gaz de quasi-particules ayant le même spin-1/2, la même charge, et le même volume sous la surface de Fermi que les électrons (ou les atomes d'Hélium 3), mais une masse renormalisée portant le nom de « masse effective », ainsi que des interactions résiduelles. Dans les solides, la masse effective traduit le fait que les interactions entre électrons ou avec les atomes du cristal (structure de bandes et interaction électron-phonon) modifient la mobilité des électrons de conduction. La renormalisation de la masse peut être importante en particulier dans les composés «fermions lourds» contenant des lanthanides ou des transuraniens. Les

Thermopower as a Unique Tool to Probe Quantum Phase Transitions

Stevan Arsenijevic

In my thesis, transport measurements such as resistivity and, more importantly, thermopower S, were used to explore the phase diagram of bad metals. Bad metals are electronically correlated systems whose ground state lies close to a quantum phase transition. By tuning the control parameters, such as temperature (T ), magnetic field (B), hydrostatic pressure (p) or chemical substitution (x), we can induce phase transitions between the various electronic, magnetic and structural phases. Here, the thermopower is presented as a unique tool for probing quantum phase transition because it is a measure of the entropy of conducting electrons. The main part of the thesis is dedicated to the study of Fe-based superconductors (FeSC) discovered in 2008. Their parent compound has an antiferromagnetic (AF) ground state, where the itinerant electrons form a spin-density wave (SDW), a periodic modulation of spin density. This coincides or is preceded by a structural, tetragonal-to-orthorhombic transition. The nesting between the electron and hole Fermi surface is believed to be the driving mechanism for the SDW state. By changing the structural or chemical properties the AF ground state of FeSC is suppressed, giving way to superconductivity (SC). The remaining antiferromagnetic fluctuations above the transition can provide a glue for SC pairing. Here, the analysis of the thermopower S/T of BaFe1−xCoxAs2 (BFCA) in the x-T phase diagram shows the signatures of the spin fluctuation which have a dome-like dependence and follow the trend of superconducting Tc . The logarithmic increase of S/T upon decreasing T is ascribed to the proximity of the spin-density-wave quantum critical point. It can be understood as an increase of entropy due to the incommensurate AF spin fluctuations. We can ascribe the high values of thermopower in BFCA at intermediate- and room-temperatures to the influence of low-T quantum criticality. To probe the response of the electronic system in FeSC to structural changes, we performed measurements under pressure of the parent compound BaFe2As2 (BFA), the SC electron-doped BFCA, and hole-doped Ba1−xKxFe2As2 (BKFA). In the parent compound pressure suppresses the structural/SDW transition, similar to the effect of doping. For doped systems, in order to describe the behavior of thermopower in the high-T range (above 100K) we used a semi-metallic two-band model which was fitted to the data in order to extract the pressure dependence of the band parameters. In both doping cases the effect of pressure was similar, an increase of the band overlap and of the effective number of charge carriers. With this model we can explain the high-T , x and p dependence of thermopower in both electron- and hole-doped BFA. In a structurally simpler Fe-chalcogenide Fe1+yTe1−xSex compound, the excess of Fe has a Kondo-like influence on the charge carriers which dramatically changes the physics of the normal state. To probe the normal state, pressure, doping, magnetic Fe-excess concentration (y) and temperature were used as control parameters. At low-T a characteristic upturn of resistivity (ρmag ) is observed, followed by an increase of thermopower (Smag ), which we identify as the magnetic contribution caused by the spin-flip scattering events. Increasing the y resulted in an increase of ρmag , and a decrease of Smag , which is in agreement with the behavior of canonical Kondo-systems. Pressure suppresses the magnetic contribution to transport, thus increasing the itinerancy of the system. MnSi is another system in which the sensitivity of thermopower to entropy brings new information related to the complex magnetic structure. Pressure was used to drive the system from a helically ordered, canonical Fermi-liquid (FL) phase with T 2-resistivity to the intrinsically disordered, non-Fermi-liquid (NFL) phase above pc with T3/2-dependence. Our contour plot of S/T demonstrated how powerful the thermopower technique is, by reproducing the whole previously established T -p phase diagram. At the phase transition from the magnetically-ordered FL phase to the disordered NFL, the thermopower is dramatically enhanced. We bring useful information about the mysterious partial order (PO) phase inside the NFL phase, previously detected only by neutron scattering. The fluctuating helices scenario can describe the observed increase of entropy/thermopower in the PO phase. At ambient pressure, close to the helical transition of MnSi, a moderate magnetic field can stabilize the skyrmion lattice - the lattice of topological magnetic whirls, vortices. We observe a signature of the skyrmion lattice as a minute drop in thermopower. It is located exactly in the same region of the T − B phase diagram where an increase in magnetoresistance and Hall effect was reported previously. This feature originates from the additional scattering of conducting electrons on magnetic vortices, while the change in S is dominated by the decrease of entropy as the stable skyrmion lattice is formed. Overall, resistivity was used to confirm the established phase diagram, while thermopower, as an interesting and not sufficiently understood technique, was used to probe the sensitive changes of the charge carriers at the Fermi surface. We explored various phases showing how useful thermopower is to probe the entropy of electronic system on the verge of quantum phase transition.

EPFL2012

Quantum oscillations in the type-II Dirac semi-metal candidate PtSe2

Philip Johannes Walter Moll, Hao Yang

Three-dimensional topological semi-metals carry quasiparticle states that mimic massless relativistic Dirac fermions, elusive particles that have never been observed in nature. As they appear in the solid body, they are not bound to the usual symmetries of space-time and thus new types of fermionic excitations that explicitly violate Lorentz-invariance have been proposed, the so-called type-II Dirac fermions. We investigate the electronic spectrum of the transition-metal dichalcogenide PtSe2 by means of quantum oscillation measurements in fields up to 65 T. The observed Fermi surfaces agree well with the expectations from band structure calculations, that recently predicted a type-II Dirac node to occur in this material. A hole- and an electron-like Fermi surface dominate the semi-metal at the Fermi level. The quasiparticle mass is significantly enhanced over the bare band mass value, likely by phonon renormalization. Our work is consistent with the existence of type-II Dirac nodes in PtSe2, yet the Dirac node is too far below the Fermi level to support free Dirac-fermion excitations.

2018

Quantum size effects in ultrathin metallic islands

I-Po Hong

This thesis reports measurements concerning quantum size effects of single crystalline metallic islands by using low-temperature scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) and spectroscopy (STS). Different sample systems are presented in the following chapters. In chapter 2, several aspects of quantum well states (QWS) of Pb ultrathin islands grown on Si(111) substrate are reported. The differential conductance spectra of QWS can be understood by discrete energy levels with linewidth broadening because of finite quasiparticle lifetime. Using low temperature scanning tunneling spectroscopy, we studied the linewidth of unoccupied quantum-well states (QWS) in Pb islands, grown on Si(111) on two different Pb/Si interfaces, of thicknesses between 7 and 22 monolayers. A quantitative analysis of the differential conductance spectra allowed us to determine the QWS lifetime broadening as a function of energy, showing agreement with 3D Fermi-liquid theory, as well as the electron-phonon (e-ph) contribution between 5 and 50 K. Layer-dependent ab initio calculations of the e-ph linewidth contributions are in excellent agreement with the data. Importantly, the sum of the calculated e-e and e-ph lifetime broadening follows the experimentally observed quadratic energy dependence. In chapter 3, studies investigating reduction of the superconducting gap of ultrathin Pb islands are presented. The energy gap Δ of superconducting Pb islands grown on Si(111) was probed in situ between 5 and 60 monolayers by low-temperature scanning tunneling spectroscopy. Δ was found to decrease from its bulk value as a function of inverse island thickness. Corresponding Tc values, estimated using bulk gap-to-Tc ratio, are in quantitative agreement with ex situ magnetic susceptibility measurements, however, in strong contrast to previous scanning probe results. Layer-dependent ab initio density functional calculations for free-standing Pb films show that the electron-phonon coupling constant, determining Tc, decreases with diminishing film thickness. In chapter 4, we present preliminary results on single electron tunneling and Coulomb blockade phenomena of metallic islands decoupled from a Ag(111) substrate by dielectric NaCl layers. Using low temperature STM/STS, the geometry of the metallic island can be determined unambiguously and the single electron tunneling properties are characterized. Using orthodox theory of single electron tunneling, the tunneling spectra can be reproduced qualitatively. Despite minor quantitative disagreement between data and simulations, the parameters of the double barrier tunneling junction, including the capacitances and the resistances of both junctions, as well as the residual charge, can be determined.