Quantum critical behaviour in confined SrTiO3 quantum wells embedded in antiferromagnetic SmTiO3

Clayton A. Jackson, Jack Y. Zhang, Christopher R. Freeze and Susanne Stemmer ()
Additional contact information
Clayton A. Jackson: University of California
Jack Y. Zhang: University of California
Christopher R. Freeze: University of California
Susanne Stemmer: University of California

Nature Communications, 2014, vol. 5, issue 1, 1-6

Abstract: Abstract Quantum phase transitions are driven by quantum fluctuations that alter the nature of the electronic quasiparticles, resulting in phenomena such as non-Fermi liquid behaviour. Oxide heterostructures offer fundamentally new ways of manipulating quantum criticality. Here, we report on non-Fermi liquid behaviour in thin SrTiO3 quantum wells that are embedded in insulating, antiferromagnetic SmTiO3, as a function of temperature, quantum well thickness and SmTiO3 layer thickness in superlattices. Such quantum wells contain very high sheet carrier densities on the order of one electron per pseudocubic planar unit cell. We show that the quantum well thickness is a tuning parameter for non-Fermi liquid behaviour. Increasing the thickness by a single atomic layer and coupling in superlattices recover the Fermi liquid behaviour. The critical exponents, the symmetry of the order parameter, the role of carrier densities and symmetry-lowering distortions are discussed, and the results are compared with those of quantum wells embedded in ferrimagnetic GdTiO3.

Date: 2014
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms5258 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:5:y:2014:i:1:d:10.1038_ncomms5258

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

DOI: 10.1038/ncomms5258

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 ().