Electronic structure of (LaNiO3_3)2_2/(LaAlO3_3)N_N heterostructures grown along [111]

The electronic structure of a LaNiO$_3$ bilayer grown along the [111] direction and confined between insulating layers of LaAlO$_3$ is theoretically investigated using a combination of first principle calculations and effective multi-orbital lattice models. The LDA band structure is well reproduced by a tight-binding model for the Ni-$e_g$ orbitals defined on the buckled honeycomb lattice. We highlight peculiar properties of this model which include almost flat bands as well as linear and quadratic band crossing points. The effect of local correlations is discussed within the LDA$+U$ scheme and within the Hartree-Fock approximation for interacting multi-orbital lattice models. Over a wide range of interaction parameters we find that a ferromagnetic phase is energetically favored. We discuss the possibility of additional orbital order which could stabilize a spontaneous Chern insulator with chiral edge modes or a staggered orbital phase with a $\sqrt{3}\times\sqrt{3}$ reconstruction of the unit cell. By studying an interacting nickel-oxygen lattice model we find that the stability of these orbitally ordered phases also depends on the value of the charge-transfer energy. Controlling the charge-transfer energy might therefore be an important step towards engineering exotic electronic phases in certain classes of oxide heterostructures.Comment: 11 pages, 11 figure

A comparative DMFT study of the eg-orbital Hubbard model in thin films

Heterostructures of transition-metal oxides emerged as a new route to engineer electronic systems with desired functionalities. Motivated by these developments, we study a two-orbital Hubbard model in a thin-film geometry confined along the cubic [001] direction using the dynamical mean-field theory. We contrast the results of two approximate impurity solvers (exact diagonalization and one-crossing approximation) to the results of the numerically exact continuous-time quantum Monte Carlo solver. Consistent with earlier studies, we find that the one-crossing approximation performs well in the insulating regime, while the advantage of the exact-diagonalization based solver is more pronounced in the metallic regime. We then investigate various aspects of strongly correlated eg-orbital systems in thin film geometries. In particular, we show how the interfacial orbital polarization dies off quickly a few layers from the interface and how the film thickness affects the location of the interaction-driven Mott transition. In addition, we explore the changes in the electronic structure with varying carrier concentration and identify large variations of the orbital polarization in the strongly correlated regime.Comment: 11 pages, 11 figure

A possible scenario for the mechanism of high-Tc superconductivity based on experimental data

The issue of the mechanism of high-Tc superconductivity remains open. In this contribution, we propose a new scenario for the mechanism of superconductivity in cuprates based on analysis of experimental data, mainly tunneling, neutron scattering and muon-spin-relaxation data, made earlier (see e.g. Mod. Phys. Lett. B 19 (2005) 743). A specific feature of this scenario is the mechanism of the establishment of long-range phase coherence among Cooper pairs, based on recent experimental data obtained in nonsuperconducting materials.Comment: 2 pages with 2 figures (Dresden conference