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Polarization control at the microscopic and electronic structure observatory
The new Microscopic and Electronic Structure Observatory (MAESTRO) at the Advanced Light Source (ALS) in Berkeley provides X-rays of variable polarization, produced by an elliptically polarized undulator (EPU), for angle resolved photoemission (ARPES) and photoemission electron microscopy (PEEM) experiments. The interpretation of photoemission data, in particular of dichroism effects in ARPES, requires the precise knowledge of the exact polarization state. Numerical simulations show that the first harmonics of the EPU at MAESTRO provides soft X-rays of almost 100% on axis polarization. However, the higher harmonics as well as the downstream optical elements of the beamline, have a considerable impact on the polarization of the light delivered to the experimental end-station. Employing a simple reflective polarimeter, the polarization is characterized for variable EPU and beamline settings and the overall degree of polarization in the MAESTRO end-stations is estimated to be on the order of 83%
Mapping the spin-dependent electron reflectivity of Fe and Co ferromagnetic thin films
Spin Polarized Low Energy Electron Microscopy is used as a spin dependent
spectroscopic probe to study the spin dependent specular reflection of a
polarized electron beam from two different magnetic thin film systems:
Fe/W(110) and Co/W(110). The reflectivity and spin-dependent
exchange-scattering asymmetry are studied as a function of electron kinetic
energy and film thickness, as well as the time dependence. The largest value of
the figure of merit for spin polarimetry is observed for a 5 monolayer thick
film of Co/W(110) at an electron kinetic energy of 2eV. This value is 2 orders
of magnitude higher than previously obtained with state of the art Mini-Mott
polarimeter. We discuss implications of our results for the development of an
electron-spin-polarimeter using the exchange-interaction at low energy.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure
Evidence for Weyl fermions in a canonical heavy-fermion semimetal YbPtBi
The manifestation of Weyl fermions in strongly correlated electron systems is
of particular interest. We report evidence for Weyl fermions in the heavy
fermion semimetal YbPtBi from electronic structure calculations, angle-resolved
photoemission spectroscopy, magnetotransport and calorimetric measurements. At
elevated temperatures where -electrons are localized, there are triply
degenerate points, yielding Weyl nodes in applied magnetic fields. These are
revealed by a contribution from the chiral anomaly in the magnetotransport,
which at low temperatures becomes negligible due to the influence of electronic
correlations. Instead, Weyl fermions are inferred from the topological Hall
effect, which provides evidence for a Berry curvature, and a cubic temperature
dependence of the specific heat, as expected from the linear dispersion near
the Weyl nodes. The results suggest that YbPtBi is a Weyl heavy fermion
semimetal, where the Kondo interaction renormalizes the bands hosting Weyl
points. These findings open up an opportunity to explore the interplay between
topology and strong electronic correlations.Comment: 19 pages, 5 figures, Supplementary Information available with open
access at https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-06782-
Bond stretching phonon softening and angle-resolved photoemission kinks in optimally doped Bi2Sr1.6La0.4Cu2O6 superconductors
We report the first measurement of the optical phonon dispersion in optimally
doped single layer Bi2Sr1.6La0.4Cu2O6+delta using inelastic x-ray scattering.
We found a strong softening of the Cu-O bond stretching phonon at about
q=(0.25,0,0) from 76 to 60 meV, similar to the one reported in other cuprates.
A direct comparison with angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy measurements
taken on the same sample, revealed an excellent agreement in terms of energy
and momentum between the ARPES nodal kink and the soft part of the bond
stretching phonon. Indeed, we find that the momentum space where a 63 meV kink
is observed can be connected with a vector q=(xi,0,0) with xi~0.22, which
corresponds exactly to the soft part of the bond stretching phonon mode. This
result supports an interpretation of the ARPES kink in terms of electron-phonon
coupling.Comment: submited to PR
A high-efficiency spin-resolved phototemission spectrometer combining time-of-flight spectroscopy with exchange-scattering polarimetry
We describe a spin-resolved electron spectrometer capable of uniquely
efficient and high energy resolution measurements. Spin analysis is obtained
through polarimetry based on low-energy exchange scattering from a
ferromagnetic thin-film target. This approach can achieve a similar analyzing
power (Sherman function) as state-of-the-art Mott scattering polarimeters, but
with as much as 100 times improved efficiency due to increased reflectivity.
Performance is further enhanced by integrating the polarimeter into a
time-of-flight (TOF) based energy analysis scheme with a precise and flexible
electrostatic lens system. The parallel acquisition of a range of electron
kinetic energies afforded by the TOF approach results in an order of magnitude
(or more) increase in efficiency compared to hemispherical analyzers. The lens
system additionally features a 90{\deg} bandpass filter, which by removing
unwanted parts of the photoelectron distribution allows the TOF technique to be
performed at low electron drift energy and high energy resolution within a wide
range of experimental parameters. The spectrometer is ideally suited for
high-resolution spin- and angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy
(spin-ARPES), and initial results are shown. The TOF approach makes the
spectrometer especially ideal for time-resolved spin-ARPES experiments.Comment: 16 pages, 11 figure
A universal high energy anomaly in angle resolved photoemission spectra of high temperature superconductors - possible evidence of spinon and holon branches
A universal high energy anomaly in the single particle spectral function is
reported in three different families of high temperature superconductors by
using angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy. As we follow the dispersing
peak of the spectral function from the Fermi energy to the valence band
complex, we find dispersion anomalies marked by two distinctive high energy
scales, E_1=~ 0.38 eV and E_2=~0.8 eV. E_1 marks the energy above which the
dispersion splits into two branches. One is a continuation of the near
parabolic dispersion, albeit with reduced spectral weight, and reaches the
bottom of the band at the gamma point at ~0.5 eV. The other is given by a peak
in the momentum space, nearly independent of energy between E_1 and E_2. Above
E_2, a band-like dispersion re-emerges. We conjecture that these two energies
mark the disintegration of the low energy quasiparticles into a spinon and
holon branch in the high T_c cuprates.Comment: accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. Let
Instability of two dimensional graphene: Breaking sp2 bonds with soft X-rays
We study the stability of various kinds of graphene samples under soft X-ray
irradiation. Our results show that in single layer exfoliated graphene (a
closer analogue to two dimensional material), the in-plane carbon-carbon bonds
are unstable under X-ray irradiation, resulting in nanocrystalline structures.
As the interaction along the third dimension increases by increasing the number
of graphene layers or through the interaction with the substrate (epitaxial
graphene), the effect of X-ray irradiation decreases and eventually becomes
negligible for graphite and epitaxial graphene. Our results demonstrate the
importance of the interaction along the third dimension in stabilizing the long
range in-plane carbon-carbon bonding, and suggest the possibility of using
X-ray to pattern graphene nanostructures in exfoliated graphene.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, Phys. Rev. B rapid communication, in pres
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