Universal Distribution of Kondo Temperatures in Dirty Metals

Kondo screening of diluted magnetic impurities in a disordered host is studied analytically and numerically in one, two and three dimensions. It is shown that in the T_K \to 0 limit the distribution of Kondo temperatures has a universal form, P(T_K) \sim T_K^{-\alpha} that holds in the insulating phase and persists in the metallic phase close to the metal insulator transition. Moreover, the exponent \alpha depends only on the dimensionality. The most important consequence of this result is that the T-dependence of thermodynamic properties is smooth across the metal-insulator transition in three dimensional systems.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures; added referenc

Magneto-structural transformations via a solid-state nudged elastic band method: Application to iron under pressure

We extend the solid-state nudged elastic band method to handle a non-conserved order parameter - in particular, magnetization, that couples to volume and leads to many observed effects in magnetic systems. We apply this formalism to the well-studied magneto-volume collapse during the pressure-induced transformation in iron - from ferromagnetic body-centered cubic (bcc) austenite to hexagonal close-packed (hcp) martensite. We find a bcc-hcp equilibrium coexistence pressure of 8.4 GPa, with the transition-state enthalpy of 156 meV/Fe at this pressure. A discontinuity in magnetization and coherent stress occurs at the transition state, which has a form of a cusp on the potential-energy surface (yet all the atomic and cell degrees of freedom are continuous); the calculated pressure jump of 25 GPa is related to the observed 25 GPa spread in measured coexistence pressures arising from martensitic and coherency stresses in samples. Our results agree with experiments, but necessarily differ from those arising from drag and restricted parametrization methods having improperly constrained or uncontrolled degrees of freedom.Comment: 7 pages, 7 figure

Seebeck effect in the conducting LaAlO_{3}/SrTiO_{3} interface

The observation of metallic behavior at the interface between insulating oxides has triggered worldwide efforts to shed light on the physics of these systems and clarify some still open issues, among which the dimensional character of the conducting system. In order to address this issue, we measure electrical transport (Seebeck effect, Hall effect and conductivity) in LaAlO_{3}/SrTiO_{3} interfaces and, for comparison, in a doped SrTiO_{3} bulk single crystal. In these experiments, the carrier concentration is tuned, using the field effect in a back gate geometry. The combined analysis of all experimental data at 77 K indicates that the thickness of the conducting layer is ~7 nm and that the Seebeck effect data are well described by a two-dimensional (2D) density of states. We find that the back gate voltage is effective in varying not only the charge density, but also the thickness of the conducting layer, which is found to change by a factor of ~2, using an electric field between -4 and +4MV/m at 77K. No enhancement of the Seebeck effect due to the electronic confinement and no evidence for two-dimensional quantization steps are observed at the interfaces.Comment: 15 pages, 5 figure

Epitaxial Growth of La1/3_{1/3}Sr2/3_{2/3}FeO3_3 thin films by laser ablation

We report on the synthesis of high quality La$_{1/3}$Sr$_{2/3}$FeO$_3$ (LSFO) thin films using the pulsed laser deposition technique on both SrTiO$_3$ (STO) and LaAlO$_3$ (LAO) substrates (100)-oriented. From X-Ray diffraction (XRD) studies, we find that the films have an out-of-plane lattice parameter around 0.3865nm, almost independent of the substrate (i.e. the nature of the strains). The transport properties reveal that, while LSFO films deposited on STO exhibit an anomaly in the resistivity vs temperature at 180K (corresponding to the charge-ordered transition and associated with a transition from a paramagnetic to an antiferromagnetic state), the films grown on LAO display a very small magnetoresistance behavior and present an hysteresis around 270K under the application of a 4T magnetic field. The changes in transport properties between both substrates are discussed and compared with the corresponding single crystals.Comment: 9 pages, 4 figure

NiO: Correlated Bandstructure of a Charge-Transfer Insulator

The bandstructure of the prototypical charge-transfer insulator NiO is computed by using a combination of an {\it ab initio} bandstructure method and the dynamical mean-field theory with a quantum Monte-Carlo impurity solver. Employing a Hamiltonian which includes both Ni-d and O-p orbitals we find excellent agreement with the energy bands determined from angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy. This solves a long-standing problem in solid state theory. Most notably we obtain the low-energy Zhang-Rice bands with strongly k-dependent orbital character discussed previously in the context of low-energy model theories.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figur

Strain induced pressure effect in pulsed laser deposited thin films of the strongly correlated oxide V2O3

V2O3 thin films about 10 nm thick were grown on Al2O3 (0001) by pulsed laser deposition. The XRD analysis is in agreement with R-3c space group. Some of them exhibit the metal / insulator transition characteristic of V2O3 bulk material and others samples exhibit a metallic behavior. For the latter, the XPS analysis indicates an oxidation state of +III for vanadium. There is no metal / insulator transition around 150 K in this sample and a strongly correlated Fermi liquid rho = AT2 behavior of the resistivity at low temperature is observed, with a value of A of 1.2 10-4 ohm cm, 3 times larger than the bulk value at 25 kbar

Single hole transistor in a p-Si/SiGe quantum well

A single hole transistor is patterned in a p-Si/SiGe quantum well by applying voltages to nanostructured top gate electrodes. Gating is achieved by oxidizing the etched semiconductor surface and the mesa walls before evaporation of the top gates. Pronounced Coulomb blockade effects are observed at small coupling of the transistor island to source and drain.Comment: 3 pages, 3 figure

First order Mott transition at zero temperature in two dimensions: Variational plaquette study

The nature of the metal-insulator Mott transition at zero temperature has been discussed for a number of years. Whether it occurs through a quantum critical point or through a first order transition is expected to profoundly influence the nature of the finite temperature phase diagram. In this paper, we study the zero temperature Mott transition in the two-dimensional Hubbard model on the square lattice with the variational cluster approximation. This takes into account the influence of antiferromagnetic short-range correlations. By contrast to single-site dynamical mean-field theory, the transition turns out to be first order even at zero temperature.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figures, version 2 with additional results for 8 bath site

Nexus between quantum criticality and the chemical potential pinning in high-TcT_c cuprates

For strongly correlated electrons the relation between total number of charge carriers $n_e$ and the chemical potential $\mu$ reveals for large Coulomb energy the apparently paradoxical pinning of $\mu$ within the Mott gap, as observed in high-$T_c$ cuprates. By unravelling consequences of the non-trivial topology of the charge gauge U(1) group and the associated ground state degeneracy we found a close kinship between the pinning of $\mu$ and the zero-temperature divergence of the charge compressibility $\kappa\sim\partial n_e/\partial\mu$, which marks a novel quantum criticality governed by topological charges rather than Landau principle of the symmetry breaking.Comment: 4+ pages, 2 figures, typos corrected, version as publishe

Mechanism of hopping transport in disordered Mott insulators

By using a combination of detailed experimental studies and simple theoretical arguments, we identify a novel mechanism characterizing the hopping transport in the Mott insulating phase of Ca$_{2-x}$Sr$_x$RuO$_4$ near the metal-insulator transition. The hopping exponent $\alpha$ shows a systematic evolution from a value of $\alpha=1/2$ deeper in the insulator to the conventional Mott value $\alpha=1/3$ closer to the transition. This behavior, which we argue to be a universal feature of disordered Mott systems close to the metal-insulator transition, is shown to reflect the gradual emergence of disorder-induced localized electronic states populating the Mott-Hubbard gap.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures, To be published in Physical Review Letter