Thermal and electrical transport across a magnetic quantum critical point

Gate-Tunable Quantum Acoustoelectric Transport in Graphene

Transport probes the motion of quasi-particles in response to external excitations. Apart from the well-known electric and thermoelectric transport, acoustoelectric transport induced by traveling acoustic waves has rarely been explored. Here, by adopting hybrid nanodevices integrated with piezoelectric substrates, we establish a simple design of acoustoelectric transport with gate tunability. We fabricate dual-gated acoustoelectric devices based on hBN-encapsulated graphene on LiNbO3. Longitudinal and transverse acoustoelectric voltages are generated by launching a pulsed surface acoustic wave. The gate dependence of zero-field longitudinal acoustoelectric signal presents strikingly similar profiles to that of Hall resistivity, providing a valid approach for extracting carrier density without magnetic field. In magnetic fields, acoustoelectric quantum oscillations appear due to Landau quantization, which are more robust and pronounced than Shubnikov-de Haas oscillations. Our work demonstrates a feasible acoustoelectric setup with gate tunability, which can be extended to the broad scope of various van der Waals materials.

Shot noise in a strange metal

Strange-metal behavior has been observed in materials ranging from high-temperature superconductors to heavy fermion metals. In conventional metals, current is carried by quasiparticles; although it has been suggested that quasiparticles are absent in strange metals, direct experimental evidence is lacking. We measured shot noise to probe the granularity of the current-carrying excitations in nanowires of the heavy fermion strange metal YbRh2Si2. When compared with conventional metals, shot noise in these nanowires is strongly suppressed. This suppression cannot be attributed to either electron-phonon or electron-electron interactions in a Fermi liquid, which suggests that the current is not carried by well-defined quasiparticles in the strange-metal regime that we probed. Our work sets the stage for similar studies of other strange metals.

Thermal Management in Neuromorphic Materials, Devices, and Networks

Machine learning has experienced unprecedented growth in recent years, often referred to as an "artificial intelligence revolution." Biological systems inspire the fundamental approach for this new computing paradigm: using neural networks to classify large amounts of data into sorting categories. Current machine-learning schemes implement simulated neurons and synapses on standard computers based on a von Neumann architecture. This approach is inefficient in energy consumption, and thermal management, motivating the search for hardware-based systems that imitate the brain. Here, the present state of thermal management of neuromorphic computing technology and the challenges and opportunities of the energy-efficient implementation of neuromorphic devices are considered. The main features of brain-inspired computing and quantum materials for implementing neuromorphic devices are briefly described, the brain criticality and resistive switching-based neuromorphic devices are discussed, the energy and electrical considerations for spiking-based computation are presented, the fundamental features of the brain's thermal regulation are addressed, the physical mechanisms for thermal management and thermoelectric control of materials and neuromorphic devices are analyzed, and challenges and new avenues for implementing energy-efficient computing are described.

High Pressure-Driven Magnetic Disorder and Structural Transformation in Fe3 GeTe2 : Emergence of a Magnetic Quantum Critical Point

Among the recently discovered 2D intrinsic van der Waals (vdW) magnets, Fe₃ GeTe₂ (FGT) has emerged as a strong candidate for spintronics applications, due to its high Curie temperature (130 - 220 K) and magnetic tunability in response to external stimuli (electrical field, light, strain). Theory predicts that the magnetism of FGT can be significantly modulated by an external strain. However, experimental evidence is needed to validate this prediction and understand the underlying mechanism of strain-mediated vdW magnetism in this system. Here, the effects of pressure (0 - 20 GPa) are elucidated on the magnetic and structural properties of Fe₃ GeTe₂ by means of synchrotron Mössbauer source spectroscopy, X-ray powder diffraction and Raman spectroscopy over a wide temperature range of 10 - 290 K. A strong suppression of ferromagnetic ordering is observed with increasing pressure, and a paramagnetic ground state emerges when pressure exceeds a critical value, P_PM ≈ 15 GPa. The anomalous pressure dependence of structural parameters and vibrational modes is observed at P_C ≈ 7 GPa and attributed to an isostructural phase transformation. Density functional theory calculations complement these experimental findings. This study highlights pressure as a driving force for magnetic quantum criticality in layered vdW magnetic systems.

An emerging global picture of heavy fermion physics

Recent progresses using state-of-the-art experimental techniques have motivated a number of new insights on heavy fermion physics. This article gives a brief summary of the author's research along this direction. We discuss five major topics including: (1) development of phase coherence and two-stage hybridization; (2) two-fluid behavior and hidden universal scaling; (3) quantum phase transitions and fractionalized heavy fermion liquid; (4) quantum critical superconductivity; (5) material-specific properties. These cover the most essential parts of heavy fermion physics and lead to an emerging global picture beyond conventional theories based on mean-field or local approximations.

Giant isotropic magneto-thermal conductivity of metallic spin liquid candidate Pr2Ir2O7 with quantum criticality

Spin liquids are exotic states with no spontaneous symmetry breaking down to zero-temperature because of the highly entangled and fluctuating spins in frustrated systems. Exotic excitations like magnetic monopoles, visons, and photons may emerge from quantum spin ice states, a special kind of spin liquids in pyrochlore lattices. These materials usually are insulators, with an exception of the pyrochlore iridate Pr2Ir2O7, which was proposed as a metallic spin liquid located at a zero-field quantum critical point. Here we report the ultralow-temperature thermal conductivity measurements on Pr2Ir2O7. The Wiedemann-Franz law is verified at high fields and inferred at zero field, suggesting no breakdown of Landau quasiparticles at the quantum critical point, and the absence of mobile fermionic excitations. This result puts strong constraints on the description of the quantum criticality in Pr2Ir2O7. Unexpectedly, although the specific heats are anisotropic with respect to magnetic field directions, the thermal conductivities display the giant but isotropic response. This indicates that quadrupolar interactions and quantum fluctuations are important, which will help determine the true ground state of this material.

Reduction of the Lorenz Number in Copper at Room Temperature due to Strong Inelastic Electron Scattering Brought about by High-Density Dislocations

In this work, heat and charge transport were measured in a series of deformed bulk Cu samples where dislocation density was tuned but dislocation character generally remained unchanged. We observed a notable violation of the Wiedemann-Franz law at room temperature for such a conventional metal. We show that high-density dislocations introduce strong inelastic electron scattering, which relax heat and charge currents to different extents. A reduction of Lorenz number by 15% was observed. We reveal that the contribution from elastic scattering to the incremental thermal resistivity scarcely varies with dislocation density, but the contribution due to inelastic scattering monotonically increases and becomes overwhelmingly dominant for dislocation density above 1.0 × 10¹⁵ m^-2.

Two-fluid model for heavy electron physics

The two-fluid model is a phenomenological description of the gradual change of the itinerant and local characters of f-electrons with temperature and other tuning parameters and has been quite successful in explaining many unusual and puzzling experimental observations in heavy electron materials. We review some of these results and discuss possible implications of the two-fluid model in understanding the microscopic origin of heavy electron physics.

Thermal Conductivity through the Quantum Critical Point in YbRh_{2}Si_{2} at Very Low Temperature

The thermal conductivity of YbRh_{2}Si_{2} has been measured down to very low temperatures under field in the basal plane. An additional channel for heat transport appears below 30 mK, both in the antiferromagnetic and paramagnetic states, respectively, below and above the critical field suppressing the magnetic order. This excludes antiferromagnetic magnons as the origin of this additional contribution to thermal conductivity. Moreover, this low temperature contribution prevails a definite conclusion on the validity or violation of the Wiedemann-Franz law at the field-induced quantum critical point.

Quantum critical behavior in heavy electron materials

Quantum critical behavior in heavy electron materials is typically brought about by changes in pressure or magnetic field. In this paper, we develop a simple unified model for the combined influence of pressure and magnetic field on the effectiveness of the hybridization that plays a central role in the two-fluid description of heavy electron emergence. We show that it leads to quantum critical and delocalization lines that accord well with those measured for CeCoIn5, yields a quantitative explanation of the field and pressure-induced changes in antiferromagnetic ordering and quantum critical behavior measured for YbRh2Si2, and provides a valuable framework for describing the role of magnetic fields in bringing about quantum critical behavior in other heavy electron materials.

Anisotropic breakdown of Fermi liquid quasiparticle excitations in overdoped La₂-xSrxCuO₄

High-temperature superconductivity emerges from an un-conventional metallic state. This has stimulated strong efforts to understand exactly how Fermi liquids breakdown and evolve into an un-conventional metal. A fundamental question is how Fermi liquid quasiparticle excitations break down in momentum space. Here we show, using angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy, that the Fermi liquid quasiparticle excitations of the overdoped superconducting cuprate La1.77Sr0.23CuO4 is highly anisotropic in momentum space. The quasiparticle scattering and residue behave differently along the Fermi surface and hence the Kadowaki-Wood's relation is not obeyed. This kind of Fermi liquid breakdown may apply to a wide range of strongly correlated metal systems where spin fluctuations are present.

Interplay between Kondo suppression and Lifshitz transitions in YbRh2Si2 at high magnetic fields

We investigate the magnetic field dependent thermopower, thermal conductivity, resistivity, and Hall effect in the heavy fermion metal YbRh2Si2. In contrast to reports on thermodynamic measurements, we find in total three transitions at high fields, rather than a single one at 10 T. Using the Mott formula together with renormalized band calculations, we identify Lifshitz transitions as their origin. The predictions of the calculations show that all experimental results rely on an interplay of a smooth suppression of the Kondo effect and the spin splitting of the flat hybridized bands.

Verification of the Wiedemann-Franz law in YbRh2Si2 at a quantum critical point

The thermal conductivity measurements are performed on the heavy-fermion compound YbRh(2)Si(2) down to 0.04 K and under magnetic fields through a quantum critical point (QCP) at B(c)=0.66  T∥c axis. In the limit as T→0, we find that the Wiedemann-Franz law is satisfied within experimental error at the QCP despite the destruction of the standard signature of Fermi liquid. Our results place strong constraints on models that attempt to describe the nature of the unconventional quantum criticality of YbRh(2)Si(2).

Anomalous reduction of the Lorenz ratio at the quantum critical point in YbAgGe

We report measurements of the electrical and thermal transport on the hexagonal heavy-fermion metal YbAgGe for temperatures T ≥ 40  mK and in magnetic fields H∥ab up to 14 T. This distorted kagome-lattice system displays a series of magnetic states and a quantum critical point at H(c) = 4.5  T. The Lorenz ratio L(T)/L0 displays a marked reduction only close to H(c). A T-linear contribution below 120 mK, present at all different fields, allows us to extrapolate the Lorenz ratio towards T = 0. At the critical field this yields L/L0 = 0.92±0.03, suggesting a violation of the Wiedemann-Franz law due to strong inelastic scattering.