Physicists use 'electron correlations' to control topological materials
For the first time, U.S. and European physicists have found a way to switch the topological state of a quantum material on and off.
Because they are extremely stable and have immutable features that cannot be erased or lost to quantum decoherence, topological states play an important role in materials research and quantum computing. In a study published in Nature Communications, researchers from Rice University, Austria’s Vienna University of Technology (TU Wien), Los Alamos National Laboratory and the Netherlands’ Radboud University described their method of using a magnetic field to activate and deactivate a topological state in a strongly correlated metal.
“Topological properties are usually found in insulating materials with weak electron correlations,” said Rice study co-author Qimiao Si, a member of theRice Quantum Initiative and director of theRice Center for Quantum Materials (RCQM). “The material we study is metallic and is strongly correlated.”
Strongly correlated quantum materials are those where the interactions of billions upon billions of electrons give rise to collective behaviors like unconventional superconductivity or electrons that behave as if they have more than 1,000 times their normal mass. Though physicists have studiedtopological materials for decades, they have only recently begun investigating topological metals that host strongly correlated interactions.
Si, a theoretical physicist, has long collaborated with the study’s corresponding author, Silke Bühler-Paschen at TU Wien’s Institute of Solid State Physics. Si and Bühler-Paschen’s research groups previously made notable discoveries on topological states in strongly correlated quantum materials. In late 2017, Si’s theoretical group found a metallic topological state caused by the quintessential example of strong-correlation physics called theKondo effect, and Bühler-Paschen’s experimental group observed the state in a composite material made of cerium, bismuth and palladium. The two teams named the strongly correlated state of matter a Weyl-Kondo semimetal.
In the new study, Bühler-Paschen’s team found small impurities or external disturbances did not bring about a dramatic change in the material’s topological properties, but the application of a laboratory-scale external magnetic field could. More