Kyle Shen

Fermi surface, surface states, and surface reconstruction in Sr2RuO4

The electronic structure of Sr2RuO4 is investigated by high angular resolution ARPES at several incident photon energies. We address the controversial issues of the Fermi surface (FS) topology and the van Hove singularity at the M point, showing that a surface state and the replica of the primary FS due to sqrt[2]xsqrt[2] surface reconstruction are responsible for previous conflicting interpretations. The FS thus determined by ARPES is consistent with the de Haas-van Alphen results, and it provides additional information on the detailed shape of the alpha, beta, and gamma sheets.

Missing quasiparticles and the chemical potential puzzle in the doping evolution of the cuprate superconductors.

The evolution of Ca2-xNaxCuO2Cl2 from Mott insulator to superconductor was studied using angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy. By measuring both the excitations near the Fermi energy as well as nonbonding states, we tracked the doping dependence of the electronic structure and the chemical potential with unprecedented precision. Our work reveals failures in the standard weakly interacting quasiparticle scenario, including the broad line shapes of the insulator and the apparently paradoxical shift of the chemical potential within the Mott gap. To resolve this, we develop a model where the quasiparticle is vanishingly small at half filling and grows upon doping, allowing us to unify properties such as the dispersion and Fermi wave vector with the chemical potential.

Superconducting Gap Anisotropy in Nd1.85Ce0.15CuO4: Results from Photoemission

We have performed angle resolved photoelectron spectroscopy on the electron doped cuprate superconductor Nd1.85Ce0.15CuO4. A comparison of the leading edge midpoints between the superconducting and normal states reveals a small, but finite shift of 1.5-2 meV near the ( pi,0) position, but no observable shift along the zone diagonal near ( pi/2, pi/2). This is interpreted as evidence for an anisotropic superconducting gap in the electron doped materials, which is consistent with the presence of d-wave superconducting order in this cuprate superconductor.

Polycrystalline Graphene with Single Crystalline Electronic Structure

We report the scalable growth of aligned graphene and hexagonal boron nitride on commercial copper foils, where each film originates from multiple nucleations yet exhibits a single orientation. Thorough characterization of our graphene reveals uniform crystallographic and electronic structures on length scales ranging from nanometers to tens of centimeters. As we demonstrate with artificial twisted graphene bilayers, these inexpensive and versatile films are ideal building blocks for large-scale layered heterostructures with angle-tunable optoelectronic properties.

Atomic-scale control of competing electronic phases in ultrathin LaNiO3

In an effort to scale down electronic devices to atomic dimensions, the use of transition-metal oxides may provide advantages over conventional semiconductors. Their high carrier densities and short electronic length scales are desirable for miniaturization, while strong interactions that mediate exotic phase diagrams open new avenues for engineering emergent properties. Nevertheless, understanding how their correlated electronic states can be manipulated at the nanoscale remains challenging. Here, we use angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy to uncover an abrupt destruction of Fermi liquid-like quasiparticles in the correlated metal LaNiO₃ when confined to a critical film thickness of two unit cells. This is accompanied by the onset of an insulating phase as measured by electrical transport. We show how this is driven by an instability to an incipient order of the underlying quantum many-body system, demonstrating the power of artificial confinement to harness control over competing phases in complex oxides with atomic-scale precision.

Quantum many-body interactions in digital oxide superlattices

Controlling the electronic properties of interfaces has enormous scientific and technological implications and has been recently extended from semiconductors to complex oxides that host emergent ground states not present in the parent materials. These oxide interfaces present a fundamentally new opportunity where, instead of conventional bandgap engineering, the electronic and magnetic properties can be optimized by engineering quantum many-body interactions. We use an integrated oxide molecular-beam epitaxy and angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy system to synthesize and investigate the electronic structure of superlattices of the Mott insulator LaMnO(3) and the band insulator SrMnO(3). By digitally varying the separation between interfaces in (LaMnO(3))(2n)/(SrMnO(3))(n) superlattices with atomic-layer precision, we demonstrate that quantum many-body interactions are enhanced, driving the electronic states from a ferromagnetic polaronic metal to a pseudogapped insulating ground state. This work demonstrates how many-body interactions can be engineered at correlated oxide interfaces, an important prerequisite to exploiting such effects in novel electronics.

Interplay of spin-orbit interactions, dimensionality, and octahedral rotations in semimetallic SrIrO(3).

We employ reactive molecular-beam epitaxy to synthesize the metastable perovskite SrIrO(3) and utilize in situ angle-resolved photoemission to reveal its electronic structure as an exotic narrow-band semimetal. We discover remarkably narrow bands which originate from a confluence of strong spin-orbit interactions, dimensionality, and both in- and out-of-plane IrO(6) octahedral rotations. The partial occupation of numerous bands with strongly mixed orbital characters signals the breakdown of the single-band Mott picture that characterizes its insulating two-dimensional counterpart, Sr(2)IrO(4), illustrating the power of structure-property relations for manipulating the subtle balance between spin-orbit interactions and electron-electron interactions.

Atomically precise interfaces from non-stoichiometric deposition

Complex oxide heterostructures display some of the most chemically abrupt, atomically precise interfaces, which is advantageous when constructing new interface phases with emergent properties by juxtaposing incompatible ground states. One might assume that atomically precise interfaces result from stoichiometric growth. Here we show that the most precise control is, however, obtained by using deliberate and specific non-stoichiometric growth conditions. For the precise growth of Sr(n+1)Ti(n)O(n+1) Ruddlesden-Popper (RP) phases, stoichiometric deposition leads to the loss of the first RP rock-salt double layer, but growing with a strontium-rich surface layer restores the bulk stoichiometry and ordering of the subsurface RP structure. Our results dramatically expand the materials that can be prepared in epitaxial heterostructures with precise interface control--from just the n = ∞ end members (perovskites) to the entire RP homologous series--enabling the exploration of novel quantum phenomena at a richer variety of oxide interfaces.

Electronic Structure of MgB2 from Angle-Resolved Photoemission Spectroscopy

The first angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy results from MgB2 single crystals are reported. Along the GammaK and GammaM directions, we observed three distinct dispersive features approaching the Fermi energy. These can be assigned to the theoretically predicted sigma (B 2p(x,y)) and pi (B 2p(z)) bands. In addition, a small parabolic-like band is detected around the Gamma point, which can be attributed to a surface-derived state. The overall agreement between our results and the band calculations suggests that the electronic structure of MgB2 is of a conventional nature, thus implying that electron correlations are weak and may be of little importance to superconductivity in this system.

Doping dependence of the coupling of electrons to bosonic modes in the single-layer high-temperature Bi2Sr2CuO6 superconductor

A recent highlight in the study of high-T(c) superconductors is the observation of band renormalization or self-energy effects on the quasiparticles. This is seen in the form of kinks in the quasiparticle dispersions as measured by photoemission and interpreted as signatures of collective bosonic modes coupling to the electrons. Here we compare for the first time the self-energies in an optimally doped and strongly overdoped, nonsuperconducting single-layer Bi-cuprate (Bi2Sr2CuO6). In addition to the appearance of a strong overall weakening, we also find that the weight of the self-energy in the overdoped system shifts to higher energies. We present evidence that this is related to a change in the coupling to c-axis phonons due to the rapid change of the c-axis screening in this doping range.