7,693 research outputs found
The reason why doping causes superconductivity in LaFeAsO
The experimental observation of superconductivity in LaFeAsO appearing on
doping is analyzed with the group-theoretical approach that evidently led in a
foregoing paper (J. Supercond 24:2103, 2011) to an understanding of the cause
of both the antiferromagnetic state and the accompanying structural distortion
in this material. Doping, like the structural distortions, means also a
reduction of the symmetry of the pure perfect crystal. In the present paper we
show that this reduction modifies the correlated motion of the electrons in a
special narrow half-filled band of LaFeAsO in such a way that these electrons
produce a stable superconducting state
Density profiles of a colloidal liquid at a wall under shear flow
Using a dynamical density functional theory we analyze the density profile of
a colloidal liquid near a wall under shear flow. Due to the symmetries of the
system considered, the naive application of dynamical density functional theory
does not lead to a shear induced modification of the equilibrium density
profile, which would be expected on physical grounds. By introducing a
physically motivated dynamic mean field correction we incorporate the missing
shear induced interparticle forces into the theory. We find that the shear flow
tends to enhance the oscillations in the density profile of hard-spheres at a
hard-wall and, at sufficiently high shear rates, induces a nonequilibrium
transition to a steady state characterized by planes of particles parallel to
the wall. Under gravity, we find that the center-of-mass of the density
distribution increases with shear rate, i.e., shear increases the potential
energy of the particles
The structural distortion in antiferromagnetic LaFeAsO investigated by a group-theoretical approach
As experimentally well established, undoped LaFeAsO is antiferromagnetic
below 137K with the magnetic moments lying on the Fe sites. We determine the
orthorhombic body-centered group Imma (74) as the space group of the
experimentally observed magnetic structure in the undistorted lattice, i.e., in
a lattice possessing no structural distortions in addition to the
magnetostriction. We show that LaFeAsO possesses a partly filled "magnetic
band" with Bloch functions that can be unitarily transformed into optimally
localized Wannier functions adapted to the space group Imma. This finding is
interpreted in the framework of a nonadiabatic extension of the Heisenberg
model of magnetism, the nonadiabatic Heisenberg model. Within this model,
however, the magnetic structure with the space group Imma is not stable but can
be stabilized by a (slight) distortion of the crystal turning the space group
Imma into the space group Pnn2 (34). This group-theoretical result is in
accordance with the experimentally observed displacements of the Fe and O atoms
in LaFeAsO as reported by Clarina de la Cruz et al. [nature 453, 899 (2008)]
Triplon mean-field analysis of an antiferromagnet with degenerate Shastry-Sutherland ground states
We look into the quantum phase diagram of a spin-
antiferromagnet on the square lattice with degenerate Shastry-Sutherland ground
states, for which only a schematic phase diagram is known so far. Many exotic
phases were proposed in the schematic phase diagram by the use of exact
diagonalization on very small system sizes. In our present work, an important
extension of this antiferromagnet is introduced and investigated in the
thermodynamic limit using triplon mean-field theory. Remarkably, this
antiferromagnet shows a stable plaquette spin-gapped phase like the original
Shastry-Sutherland antiferromagnet, although both of these antiferromagnets
differ in the Hamiltonian construction and ground state degeneracy. We propose
a sublattice columnar dimer phase which is stabilized by the second and third
neighbor antiferromagnetic Heisenberg exchange interactions. There are also
some commensurate and incommensurate magnetically ordered phases, and other
spin-gapped phases which find their places in the quantum phase diagram.
Mean-field results suggest that there is always a level-crossing phase
transition between two spin gapped phases, whereas in other situations, either
a level-crossing or a continuous phase transition happens
On the low-field Hall coefficient of graphite
We have measured the temperature and magnetic field dependence of the Hall
coefficient () in three, several micrometer long multigraphene
samples of thickness between to ~nm in the temperature range
0.1 to 200~K and up to 0.2~T field. The temperature dependence of the
longitudinal resistance of two of the samples indicates the contribution from
embedded interfaces running parallel to the graphene layers. At low enough
temperatures and fields is positive in all samples, showing a
crossover to negative values at high enough fields and/or temperatures in
samples with interfaces contribution. The overall results are compatible with
the reported superconducting behavior of embedded interfaces in the graphite
structure and indicate that the negative low magnetic field Hall coefficient is
not intrinsic of the ideal graphite structure.Comment: 10 pages with 7 figures, to be published in AIP Advances (2014
An optical lattice on an atom chip
Optical dipole traps and atom chips are two very powerful tools for the
quantum manipulation of neutral atoms. We demonstrate that both methods can be
combined by creating an optical lattice potential on an atom chip. A
red-detuned laser beam is retro-reflected using the atom chip surface as a
high-quality mirror, generating a vertical array of purely optical oblate
traps. We load thermal atoms from the chip into the lattice and observe cooling
into the two-dimensional regime where the thermal energy is smaller than a
quantum of transverse excitation. Using a chip-generated Bose-Einstein
condensate, we demonstrate coherent Bloch oscillations in the lattice.Comment: 3 pages, 2 figure
Spin Waves in Quantum Antiferromagnets
Using a self-consistent mean-field theory for the Heisenberg
antiferromagnet Kr\"uger and Schuck recently derived an analytic expression for
the dispersion. It is exact in one dimension () and agrees well with
numerical results in . With an expansion in powers of the inverse
coordination number () we investigate if this expression can be
{\em exact} for all . The projection method of Mori-Zwanzig is used for the
{\em dynamical} spin susceptibility. We find that the expression of Kr\"uger
and Schuck deviates in order from our rigorous result. Our method is
generalised to arbitrary spin and to models with easy-axis anisotropy \D.
It can be systematically improved to higher orders in . We clarify its
relation to the expansion.Comment: 8 pages, uuencoded compressed PS-file, accepted as Euro. Phys. Lette
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