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Hexaboride: a simple crystal structure may shed light on unsolved mysteries

Xiaohang Zhang (University of Maryland)

In strongly correlated systems, interactions between iterant electrons and local spins may lead to novel physical phenomena such as colossal magnetoresistance (CMR), high Tc superconductivity, heavy fermions, etc. Despite much progress has been made both theoretically and experimentally, complete understanding of many of these emergent properties has been facing challenges from usually complicated crystal and electronic structures in these compounds. With a relatively simple body-centered-cubic-like crystal structure, many hexaborides have also been found to demonstrate various novel phenomena similar to those observed in other correlated systems and thus are expected to provide ideal examples for the study of the underlying physics. In this talk, I will focus on two specific members of the hexaboride family, i.e. EuB6 and SmB6: the former is a ferromagnetic semimetal which shows CMR behavior that is first and better known in mixed-valence manganites, while the latter is a prototypical Kondo insulator that has been recently suggested to be a topological insulator. I will discuss the implications of our Hall effect and point contact spectroscopy results in relation to the unsolved mysteries not only in these two materials but possibly in correlated systems in general.

References: 1. X. H. Zhang, L. Q. Yu, S. von Molnar, Z. Fisk, and P. Xiong, Phys. Rev. Lett. 103, 106602 (2009) 2. L. Q. Yu, L. F. Wang, X. H. Zhang, W. B. Wu, S. von Molnar, Z. Fisk, and P. Xiong, New J. Phys. 15, 113057 (2013) 3. X. H. Zhang, N. P. Butch, P. Syers, S. Ziemak, R. L. Greene, and J. Paglione, Phys. Rev. X 3, 011011 (2013)

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