Contributor info: Prof. Kamran Behnia

Kamran Behnia

SciPost Phys. 12, 200 (2022) · published 24 June 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

La$_{1.67}$Sr$_{0.33}$CuO$_4$ is not a superconductor and its resistivity follows a purely T$^2$ temperature dependence at very low temperatures. La$_{1.71}$Sr$_{0.29}$CuO$_4$, on the other hand, has a superconducting ground state together with a T-Linear term in its resistivity. The concomitant emergence of these two features below a critical doping is mystifying. Here, I notice that the electron-electron collision rate in the Fermi liquid above the doping threshold is unusually large. The scattering time of nodal quasi-particles expressed in a dimensionless parameter $\zeta$ is very close to what has been found in liquid $^3$He at its melting pressure. In the latter case, fermionic particles become dynamically distinguishable by excess of interaction. Ceasing to be dynamically indistinguishable, nodal electrons will be excluded from the Fermi sea. Such non-degenerate carriers will then scatter the degenerate ones within a phase space growing linearly with temperature.

Xiaokang Li, Liangcai Xu, Huakun Zuo, Alaska Subedi, Zengwei Zhu, Kamran Behnia

SciPost Phys. 5, 063 (2018) · published 18 December 2018 | Toggle abstract · pdf

Mn$_{3}$X (X= Sn, Ge) are noncollinear antiferromagnets hosting a large anomalous Hall effect (AHE). Weyl nodes in the electronic dispersions are believed to cause this AHE, but their locus in the momentum space is yet to be pinned down. We present a detailed study of the Hall conductivity tensor and magnetization in Mn$_{3}$Sn crystals and find that in the presence of a moderate magnetic field, spin texture sets the orientation of the $k$-space Berry curvature with no detectable in-plane anisotropy due to the $Z_6$ symmetry of the underlying lattice. We quantify the energy cost of domain nucleation and show that themultidomain regime is restricted to a narrow field window. Comparing the field dependence of AHE and magnetization, we find that there is a distinct component in the AHE which does not scale with magnetization when the domain walls are erected. This so-called `topological' Hall effect provides indirect evidence for a non-coplanar spin components and real-space Berry curvature in domain walls.