1,222 research outputs found
Non-vanishing Berry Phase in Chiral Insulators
The binary compounds FeSi, RuSi, and OsSi are chiral insulators crystallizing
in the space group P2_13 which is cubic. By means of ab initio calculations we
find for these compounds a non-vanishing electronic Berry phase, the sign of
which depends on the handedness of the crystal. There is thus the possibility
that the Berry phase signals the existence of a macroscopic electric
polarization due to the electrons. We show that this is indeed so if a small
external magnetic field is applied in the [111]-direction. The electric
polarization is oscillatory in the magnetic field and possesses a signature
that distinguishes the handedness of the crystal. Our findings add to the
discussion of topological classifications of insulators and are significant for
spintronics applications, and in particular, for a deeper understanding of
skyrmions in insulators
Stability of Weyl points in magnetic half-metallic Heusler compounds
We employ {\it ab-initio} fully-relativistic electronic structure
calculations to study the stability of the Weyl points in the momentum space
within the class of the half-metallic ferromagnetic full Heusler materials, by
focusing on CoTiAl as a well-established prototype compound. Here we show
that both the number of the Weyl points together with their -space
coordinates can be controlled by the orientation of the magnetization. This
alternative degree of freedom, which is absent in other topological materials
(e.g. in Weyl semimetals), introduces novel functionalities, specific for the
class of half-metallic ferromagnets. Of special interest are Weyl points which
are preserved irrespectively of any arbitrary rotation of the magnetization
axis
The half-metallic ferromagnet Co2Mn0.5Fe0.5Si
Electronic structure calculation were used to predict a new material for
spintronic applications. Co2Mn0.5Fe0.5Si is one example which is stable against
on-site correlation and disorder effects due to the position of the Fermi
energy in the middle of the minority band gap. Experimentally the sample were
made exhibiting L21 structure and a high magnetic order.Comment: 5 pages, 2 Figures, J. Magn. Magn. Mater. accepte
Superconductivity in Weyl semimetal NbP: Bulk vs. surface
Transition metal monopnictides belong to the new class of semimetals where the bulk properties are determined by the presence of pairs of nodes with different chirality formed by linear dispersive states in the k-space. Beside the anomaly in the bulk magnetotransport superconductivity is frequently found in some Weyl semimetals. We found signatures of superconductivity in ac and dc magnetization measurements of highly pure and stoichiometric NbP powder. We determined the lower and upper critical field and the Ginzburg-Landau parameter. The relative small superconducting volume fraction is related to either effect of finite grain size and/or surface superconductivity. The last mentioned may originate from either off stoichiometric (Nb-rich) surface layers or a strained surface with different electronic properties. Furthermore the intrinsic normal state susceptibility is determined taking into account a paramagnetic contribution of a few ppm of magnetic impurities
Evolution of magnetic fluctuations through the Fe-induced paramagnetic to ferromagnetic transition in CrB
In itinerant ferromagnets, the quenched disorder is predicted to dramatically
affect the ferromagnetic to paramagnetic quantum phase transition driven by
external control parameters at zero temperature. Here we report a study on
Fe-doped CrB, which, starting from the paramagnetic parent, orders
ferromagnetically for Fe-doping concentrations larger than \%. In parent CrB, B nuclear magnetic resonance data reveal
the presence of both ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic fluctuations. The
latter are suppressed with Fe-doping, before the ferromagnetic ones finally
prevail for . Indications for non-Fermi liquid behavior, usually
associated with the proximity of a quantum critical point, were found for all
samples, including undoped CrB. The sharpness of the ferromagnetic-like
transition changes on moving away from , indicating significant
changes in the nature of the magnetic transitions in the vicinity of the
quantum critical point. Our data provide constraints for understanding quantum
phase transitions in itinerant ferromagnets in the limit of weak quenched
disorder.Comment: 8 pages, 7 figure
Processing wh-dependencies in a second language: A cross-modal priming study
This study investigates the real-time processing of wh-dependencies by advanced Greek-speaking learners of English using a cross-modal picture priming task. Participants were asked to respond to different types of picture target presented either at structurally defined gap positions, or at pre-gap control positions, while listening to sentences containing indirect-object relative clauses. Our results indicate that the learners processed the experimental sentences differently from both adult native speakers of English and monolingual English-speaking children. Contrary to what has been found for native speakers, the learners' response pattern was not influenced by individual working memory differences. Adult second language learners differed from native speakers with a relatively high reading or listening span in that they did not show any evidence of structurally based antecedent reactivation at the point of the indirect object gap. They also differed from low-span native speakers, however, in that they showed evidence of maintained antecedent activation during the processing of the experimental sentences. Whereas the localized priming effect observed in the high-span controls is indicative of trace-based antecedent reactivation in native sentence processing, the results from the Greek-speaking learners support the hypothesis that the mental representations built during non-native language processing lack abstract linguistic structure such as movement traces
Premartensite to martensite transition and its implications on the origin of modulation in Ni2MnGa ferromagnetic shape memory alloy
We present here results of temperature dependent high resolution synchrotron
x-ray powder diffraction study of sequence of phase transitions in Ni2MnGa. Our
results show that the incommensurate martensite phase results from the
incommensurate premartensite phase, and not from the austenite phase assumed in
the adaptive phase model. The premartensite phase transforms to the martensite
phase through a first order phase transition with coexistence of the two phases
in a broad temperature interval (~40K), discontinuous change in the unit cell
volume as also in the modulation wave vector across the transition temperature
and considerable thermal hysteresis in the characteristic transition
temperatures. The temperature variation of the modulation wave vector q shows
smooth analytic behaviour with no evidence for any devilish plateau
corresponding to an intermediate or ground state commensurate lock-in phases.
The existence of the incommensurate 7M like modulated structure down to 5K
suggests that the incommensurate 7M like modulation is the ground state of
Ni2MnGa and not the Bain distorted tetragonal L10 phase or any other lock-in
phase with a commensurate modulation. These findings can be explained within
the framework of the soft phonon model
Design strong anomalous Hall effect via spin canting in antiferromagnetic nodal line materials
The interplay between magnetism and the topological electronic structure provides a large freedom for designing strong anomalous Hall effect (AHE) materials. A nodal line from band inversion is a typical band structure for generating strong AHE. On the other band, in most collinear antiferromagnets (AFMs), the integral of the Berry curvatures on the Brillouin zone is forced to zero by the joint TO symmetry, where T and O are the time reversal and a space group operation, respectively. Even with inverted band structures, such AFM cannot have an AHE. Therefore, the AFM nodal line band structures constructed by spin degenerated bands do not receive much attention in AHE materials. In this work, we illustrate that such a band structure provides a promising starting point for generating strong local and net Berry curvature and, hence, strong intrinsic AHE. In specific AFM compounds of AMnBi(2) (A = Ca and Yb) with an inverted band structure, we observed a strong AHE induced by a weak spin canting from temperature or doping. The anomalous Hall conductivity continues to grow with the canting angle owing to the nodal line in the band structure. Since such spin canting can be adjusted experimentally via doping, it provides another effective strategy to generate and manipulate a strong AHE
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