Evidence for the weakly coupled electron mechanism in an Anderson-Blount polar metal

N. J. Laurita, A. Ron, Jun-Yi Shan, D. Puggioni, N. Z. Koocher, K. Yamaura, Y. Shi, J. M. Rondinelli and D. Hsieh ()
Additional contact information
N. J. Laurita: California Institute of Technology
A. Ron: California Institute of Technology
Jun-Yi Shan: California Institute of Technology
D. Puggioni: Northwestern University
N. Z. Koocher: Northwestern University
K. Yamaura: National Institute for Materials Science
Y. Shi: Chinese Academy of Sciences
J. M. Rondinelli: Northwestern University
D. Hsieh: California Institute of Technology

Nature Communications, 2019, vol. 10, issue 1, 1-7

Abstract: Abstract Over 50 years ago, Anderson and Blount proposed that ferroelectric-like structural phase transitions may occur in metals, despite the expected screening of the Coulomb interactions that often drive polar transitions. Recently, theoretical treatments have suggested that such transitions require the itinerant electrons be decoupled from the soft transverse optical phonons responsible for polar order. However, this decoupled electron mechanism (DEM) has yet to be experimentally observed. Here we utilize ultrafast spectroscopy to uncover evidence of the DEM in LiOsO3, the first known band metal to undergo a thermally driven polar phase transition (Tc ≈ 140 K). We demonstrate that intra-band photo-carriers relax by selectively coupling to only a subset of the phonon spectrum, leaving as much as 60% of the lattice heat capacity decoupled. This decoupled heat capacity is shown to be consistent with a previously undetected and partially displacive TO polar mode, indicating the DEM in LiOsO3.

Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-11172-2 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:10:y:2019:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-019-11172-2

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-019-11172-2

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().