Damped Topological Magnons in the Kagom\'{e}-Lattice Ferromagnets

We demonstrate that interactions can substantially undermine the free-particle description of magnons in ferromagnets on geometrically frustrated lattices. The anharmonic coupling, facilitated by the Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction, and a highly-degenerate two-magnon continuum yield a strong, non-perturbative damping of the high-energy magnon modes. We provide a detailed account of the effect for the $S=1/2$ ferromagnet on the kagom\'e lattice and propose further experiments.Comment: 4.5 p + 4 figs main, 8 p + 16 figs supplemental, typos correcte

Phonon assisted tunneling in Josephson junctions

The expression for additional subgap current in the presence of electron-phonon interaction is derived. We show that the phonon assisted tunneling leads to appearance of peaks on current-voltage characteristics at the Josephson frequencies corresponding to the Raman-active phonons. The relation of the obtained results to experimental observations are discussed.Comment: 8 pages, submitted to PR

Ab initio calculations of the physical properties of transition metal carbides and nitrides and possible routes to high-Tc

Ab initio linear-response calculations are reported of the phonon spectra and the electron-phonon interaction for several transition metal carbides and nitrides in a NaCl-type structure. For NbC, the kinetic, optical, and superconducting properties are calculated in detail at various pressures and the normal-pressure results are found to well agree with the experiment. Factors accounting for the relatively low critical temperatures Tc in transition metal compounds with light elements are considered and the possible ways of increasing Tc are discussed.Comment: 19 pages, 7 figure

Topography of Spin Liquids on a Triangular Lattice

Spin systems with frustrated anisotropic interactions are of significant interest due to possible exotic ground states. We have explored their phase diagram on a nearest-neighbor triangular lattice using the density-matrix renormalization group and mapped out the topography of the region that can harbor a spin liquid. We find that this spin-liquid phase is continuously connected to a previously discovered spin-liquid phase of the isotropic $J_1\!-\!J_2$ model. The two limits show nearly identical spin correlations, making the case that their respective spin liquids are isomorphic to each other.Comment: Accepted to PRL; 5 p., 11+ p. supplemental; main text is longer than the accepted versio

Disorder-Induced Mimicry of a Spin Liquid in YbMgGaO4_4

We suggest that a randomization of the pseudo-dipolar interaction in the spin-orbit-generated low-energy Hamiltonian of YbMgGaO$_4$ due to an inhomogeneous charge environment from a natural mixing of Mg$^{2+}$ and Ga$^{3+}$ can give rise to orientational spin disorder and mimic a spin-liquid-like state. In the absence of such quenched disorder, $1/S$ and density matrix renormalization group calculations both show robust ordered states for the physically relevant phases of the model. Our scenario is consistent with the available experimental data and further experiments are proposed to support it.Comment: 5+ main text, 7+ supplemental, text asymptotically close to PR

Rethinking α\alpha-RuCl3_3

We argue that several empirical constraints strongly restrict parameters of the effective microscopic spin model describing $\alpha$-RuCl$_3$. In particular, such constraints dictate a substantial \emph{positive} off-diagonal anisotropic coupling, $\Gamma^\prime\!>\!0$, not anticipated previously. The renormalization by quantum fluctuations allows to reconcile larger values of the advocated bare parameters with their earlier assessments and provides a consistent description of the field evolution of spin excitations in the paramagnetic phase. We assert that large anisotropic terms inevitably result in strong anharmonic coupling of magnons, necessarily leading to broad features in their spectra due to decays, in accord with the observations in $\alpha$-RuCl$_3$. Using duality transformations, we explain the origin of the pseudo-Goldstone mode that is ubiquitous to the studied parameter space and is present in $\alpha$-RuCl$_3$. Our analysis offers a description of $\alpha$-RuCl$_3$ as an easy-plane ferromagnet with antiferromagnetic further-neighbor and strong off-diagonal couplings, which is in a fluctuating zigzag ground state proximate to an incommensurate phase that is continuously connected to a ferromagnetic one.Comment: As accepted to Phys. Rev. of Rethinking (PRR). Typos in Appendix fixed, award-winning acknowledgement

Critical temperature and giant isotope effect in presence of paramagnons

We reconsider the long-standing problem of the effect of spin fluctuations on the critical temperature and isotope effect in a phonon-mediated superconductor. Although the general physics of the interplay between phonons and paramagnons had been rather well understood, the existing approximate formulas fail to describe the correct behavior of $$ for general phonon and paramagnon spectra. Using a controllable approximation, we derive an analytical formula for $T_{c}$ which agrees well with exact numerical solutions of the Eliashberg equations for a broad range of parameters. Based on both numerical and analytical results, we predict a strong enhancement of the isotope effect when the frequencies of spin fluctuation and phonons are of the same order. This effect may have important consequences for near-magnetic superconductors such as MgCNi$_{3}$Comment: 5 pages, 2 figure

Nanoengineered Curie Temperature in Laterally-Patterned Ferromagnetic Semiconductor Heterostructures

We demonstrate the manipulation of the Curie temperature of buried layers of the ferromagnetic semiconductor (Ga,Mn)As using nanolithography to enhance the effect of annealing. Patterning the GaAs-capped ferromagnetic layers into nanowires exposes free surfaces at the sidewalls of the patterned (Ga,Mn)As layers and thus allows the removal of Mn interstitials using annealing. This leads to an enhanced Curie temperature and reduced resistivity compared to unpatterned samples. For a fixed annealing time, the enhancement of the Curie temperature is larger for narrower nanowires.Comment: Submitted to Applied Physics Letters (minor corrections

Signatures of Quantum Chaos and fermionization in the incoherent transport of bosonic carriers in the Bose-Hubbard chain

We analyse the stationary current of Bose particles across the Bose-Hubbard chain connected to a battery, focusing on the effect of inter-particle interactions. It is shown that the current magnitude drastically decreases as the strength of inter-particle interactions exceeds the critical value which marks the transition to quantum chaos in the Bose-Hubbard Hamiltonian. We found that this transition is well reflected in the non-equilibrium many-body density matrix of the system. Namely, the level-spacing distribution for eigenvalues of the density matrix changes from Poisson to Wigner-Dyson distributions. With the further increase of the interaction strength, the Wigner-Dyson spectrum statistics changes back to the Poisson statistics which now marks fermionization of the bosonic particles. With respect to the stationary current, this leads to the counter-intuitive dependence of the current magnitude on the particle number.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figure