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Abstract Most commercial systems for ultraviolet-visible (UV–VIS), Fourier-transform infrared, circular dichroism (CD), and fluorescence spectroscopies are designed for measurement of liquid samples. Moreover, adapters enabling the measurement of solid samples are expensive or unavailable for most commercial instruments. Consequently, there is a significant need for solid sample adapters that enable measurement of both liquid and solid samples with a single system. Here, we report two versions of a solid sample adapter cuvette that can be used in most commercial spectroscopy instruments designed for transmission measurement of liquid samples. One version is designed for techniques that do not require changing the sample orientation, and the other allows easy sample rotation. We successfully fabricated these cuvettes by 3D printing with both fused deposition modeling and stereolithography and demonstrated how they enable us to study the optical properties of macroscopic films of aligned carbon nanotubes by performing UV–VIS and CD spectroscopy measurements with the cuvettes. These 3D printed cuvettes and their implementation will help enable a wide range of experiments at a low cost. 

Cobalt titanate, CoTiO3, is a honeycomb antiferromagnet recently confirmed experimentally to host Dirac magnons, topological spin-orbit excitons, and chiral phonons. Here, we investigate a magnon gap at the zone center which calls for a refined spin Hamiltonian. We propose a microscopic model for the magnon gap and attribute it to a lattice-distortion (phonon)-induced higher-order spin interaction. Strong magnetoelastic coupling in CoTiO3 is also evident in Raman spectra, in which the magnetic order exerts a stronger influence on phonons corresponding to in-plane ionic motions than those with out-of-plane motions. We further examine the evolution of the zone-center magnons in a high magnetic field up to 18.5 T via THz absorption spectroscopy measurements. Based on this field dependence, we propose a spin Hamiltonian that not only agrees with magnon dispersion measured by inelastic neutron scattering but also includes fewer exchange constants and a realistic anisotropy term. Our work highlights the broad implications of magnetoelastic coupling in the study of topologically protected bosonic excitations. 

Angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) is a powerful tool for probing the momentum-resolved single-particle spectral function of materials. Historically, in situ magnetic fields have been carefully avoided as they are detrimental to the control of photoelectron trajectory during the photoelectron detection process. However, magnetic field is an important experimental knob for both probing and tuning symmetry-breaking phases and electronic topology in quantum materials. In this paper, we introduce an easily implementable method for realizing an in situ tunable magnetic field at the sample position in an ARPES experiment and analyze magnetic-field-induced artifacts in the ARPES data. Specifically, we identified and quantified three distinct extrinsic effects of a magnetic field: constant energy contour rotation, emission angle contraction, and momentum broadening. We examined these effects in three prototypical quantum materials, i.e., a topological insulator (Bi2Se3), an iron-based superconductor (LiFeAs), and a cuprate superconductor (Pb-Bi2Sr2CuO6+x), and demonstrate the feasibility of ARPES measurements in the presence of a controllable magnetic field. Our studies lay the foundation for the future development of the technique and interpretation of ARPES measurements of field-tunable quantum phases. 

A central problem in modern condensed matter physics is the understanding of materials with strong electron correlations. Despite extensive work, the essential physics of many of these systems is not understood and there is very little ability to make predictions in this class of materials. In this manuscript we share our personal views on the major open problems in the field of correlated electron systems. We discuss some possible routes to make progress in this rich and fascinating field. This manuscript is the result of the vigorous discussions and deliberations that took place at Johns Hopkins University during a three-day workshop January 27, 28, and 29, 2020 that brought together six senior scientists and 46 more junior scientists. Our hope, is that the topics we have presented will provide inspiration for others working in this field and motivation for the idea that significant progress can be made on very hard problems if we focus our collective energies. 

Creating artificial matter with controllable chirality in a simple and scalable manner brings new opportunities to diverse areas. Here we show two such methods based on controlled vacuum filtration - twist stacking and mechanical rotation - for fabricating wafer-scale chiral architectures of ordered carbon nanotubes (CNTs) with tunable and large circular dichroism (CD). By controlling the stacking angle and handedness in the twist-stacking approach, we maximize the CD response and achieve a high deep-ultraviolet ellipticity of 40 ± 1 mdeg nm⁻¹. Our theoretical simulations using the transfer matrix method reproduce the experimentally observed CD spectra and further predict that an optimized film of twist-stacked CNTs can exhibit an ellipticity as high as 150 mdeg nm⁻¹, corresponding to agfactor of 0.22. Furthermore, the mechanical rotation method not only accelerates the fabrication of twisted structures but also produces both chiralities simultaneously in a single sample, in a single run, and in a controllable manner. The created wafer-scale objects represent an alternative type of synthetic chiral matter consisting of ordered quantum wires whose macroscopic properties are governed by nanoscopic electronic signatures and can be used to explore chiral phenomena and develop chiral photonic and optoelectronic devices.