Decoupling of the Antiferromagnetic and Insulating States in Tb doped Sr2IrO4

Sr2IrO4 is a spin-orbit coupled insulator with an antiferromagnetic (AFM) transition at TN=240 K. We report results of a comprehensive study of single-crystal Sr2Ir1-xTbxO4. This study found that mere 3% (x=0.03) tetravalent Tb4+(4f7) substituting for Ir4+ (rather than Sr2+) completely suppresses the long-range collinear AFM transition but retains the insulating state, leading to a phase diagram featuring a decoupling of magnetic interactions and charge gap. The insulating state at x=0.03 is characterized by an unusually large specific heat at low temperatures and an incommensurate magnetic state having magnetic peaks at (0.95, 0, 0) and (0, 0.95, 0) in the neutron diffraction, suggesting a spiral or spin density wave order. It is apparent that Tb doping effectively changes the relative strength of the SOI and the tetragonal CEF and enhances the Hund's rule coupling that competes with the SOI, and destabilizes the AFM state. However, the disappearance of the AFM accompanies no metallic state chiefly because an energy level mismatch for the Ir and Tb sites weakens charge carrier hopping and renders a persistent insulating state. This work highlights an unconventional correlation between the AFM and insulating states in which the magnetic transition plays no critical role in the formation of the charge gap in the iridate.Comment: 8 figure

Orbitally-driven Behavior: Mott Transition, Quantum Oscillations and Colossal Magnetoresistance in Bilayered Ca3Ru2O7

We report recent transport and thermodynamic experiments over a wide range of temperatures for the Mott-like system Ca3Ru2O7 at high magnetic fields, B, up to 30 T. This work reveals a rich and highly anisotropic phase diagram, where applying B along the a-, b-, and c-axis leads to vastly different behavior. A fully spin-polarized state via a first order metamagnetic transition is obtained for B||a, and colossal magnetoresistance is seen for B||b, and quantum oscillations in the resistivity are observed for B||c, respectively. The interplay of the lattice, orbital and spin degrees of freedom are believed to give rise to this strongly anisotropic behavior.Comment: 26 pages and 8 figure

Multipole correlations of t2gt_{\rm 2g}-orbital Hubbard model with spin-orbit coupling

We investigate the ground-state properties of a one-dimensional $t_{\rm 2g}$-orbital Hubbard model including an atomic spin-orbit coupling by using numerical methods, such as Lanczos diagonalization and density-matrix renormalization group. As the spin-orbit coupling increases, we find a ground-state transition from a paramegnetic state to a ferromagnetic state. In the ferromagnetic state, since the spin-orbit coupling mixes spin and orbital states with complex number coefficients, an antiferro-orbital state with complex orbitals appears. According to the appearance of the complex orbital state, we observe an enhancement of $\Gamma_{4u}$ octupole correlations.Comment: 3 pages, 3 figures, To appear in J. Phys. Soc. Jpn. Suppl., Proceedings of ICHE2010 (September 17-20, 2010, Hachioji, Japan

Anomalous itinerant magnetism in single crystal Sr4Ru3O10: A thermodynamic and transport investigation

A thermodynamic and transport study of Sr4Ru3O10 as a function of temperature and magnetic field is presented. The central results include a growing specific heat C with increasing field B, a magnetic contribution to C/T at low temperatures proportional to -log(T), an abrupt jump and a peak in C/T at 2.90 T and 7 T for B||ab-plane and B||c-axis, respectively, and corresponding changes in the low T power laws of the resistivity. The novelty of this work lies in the fact that this system is strongly anisotropic displaying spontaneous ferromagnetism along the c-axis and an intralayer metamagnetic transition with a possibility of a nearby quantum critical point. The exotic behavior reflects new physics that is yet to be understood

Crossover between Levy and Gaussian regimes in first passage processes

We propose a new approach to the problem of the first passage time. Our method is applicable not only to the Wiener process but also to the non--Gaussian L$\acute{\rm e}$vy flights or to more complicated stochastic processes whose distributions are stable. To show the usefulness of the method, we particularly focus on the first passage time problems in the truncated L$\acute{\rm e}$vy flights (the so-called KoBoL processes), in which the arbitrarily large tail of the L$\acute{\rm e}$vy distribution is cut off. We find that the asymptotic scaling law of the first passage time $t$ distribution changes from $t^{-(\alpha +1)/\alpha}$-law (non-Gaussian L$\acute{\rm e}$vy regime) to $t^{-3/2}$-law (Gaussian regime) at the crossover point. This result means that an ultra-slow convergence from the non-Gaussian L$\acute{\rm e}$vy regime to the Gaussian regime is observed not only in the distribution of the real time step for the truncated L$\acute{\rm e}$vy flight but also in the first passage time distribution of the flight. The nature of the crossover in the scaling laws and the scaling relation on the crossover point with respect to the effective cut-off length of the L$\acute{\rm e}$vy distribution are discussed.Comment: 18pages, 7figures, using revtex4, to appear in Phys.Rev.

Spin and charge gaps in the one-dimensional Kondo-lattice model with Coulomb interaction between conduction electrons

The density-matrix renormalization-group method is applied to the one-dimensional Kondo-lattice model with the Coulomb interaction between the conduction electrons. The spin and charge gaps are calculated as a function of the exchange constant $J$ and the Coulomb interaction $U_c$. It is shown that both the spin and charge gaps increase with increasing $J$ and $U_c$. The spin gap vanishes in the limit of $J \rightarrow 0$ for any $U_c$ with an exponential form, $\Delta_s\propto \exp{[-1/\alpha (U_c) J \rho]}$. The exponent, $\alpha (U_c)$, is determined as a function of $U_c$. The charge gap is generally much larger than the spin gap. In the limit of $J \rightarrow 0$, the charge gap vanishes as $\Delta_c=\frac{1}{2}J$ for $U_c=0$ but for a finite $U_c$ it tends to a finite value, which is the charge gap of the Hubbard model.Comment: RevTeX, 4 pages, 3 Postscript figure

Phase diagram and critical properties of the frustrated Kondo necklace model in a magnetic field

The critical properties of the frustrated Kondo necklace model with a half saturation magnetization ($m=1/2$) have been studied by means of an exact-diagonalization method. It is shown from bosonization technique that the model can be effectively expressed as a quantum sine-Gordom model. Thus it may show three (dimer plateau, N{\'e}el plateau and Tomonaga-Luttinger liquid) phases due to competitions among the Ising anisotropy $\Delta$, and the nearest- and next-nearest-neighbor exchange interactions $J_1$ and $J_2$. The boundary lines on the $\Delta-J_2/J_1$ phase diagram separating the three phases are determined by the method of level spectroscopy based on the conformal field theory.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figure