Formation of charge density waves (CDW) is a symmetry breaking phenomenon found in electronic systems, which is particularly common in quasi-one-dimensional conductors. It is widely observed from highly anisotropic materials to isotropic ones like the superconducting pnictides. The CDW is seen as a sinusoidal deformation of coupled electronic density and lattice modulation; it can be also viewed as a crystal of singlet electronic pairs. In the CDW state, the elementary units can be readjusted by absorbing or rejecting pairs of electrons. Such a process should go via topologically nontrivial configurations: solitons and dislocations - the CDW vortices. An experimental access to these inhomogeneous CDW states came from studies of nano-fabricated mesa-junctions, from the STM and from the X-ray micro-diffraction. Following these requests, we have performed a program of modeling stationary states and of their transient dynamic for the CDW in restricted geometries under applied voltage or at passing normal currents. The model takes into account multiple fields in mutual nonlinear interactions: the two components of the CDW complex order parameter, and distributions of the electric field, the density and the current of normal carriers. We were using the Ginzburg-Landau type approach and also we have derived its extension based on the property of the chiral invariance. We observed the incremental creation of static dislocations within the junctions. The transient dynamics is very rich showing creation, annihilation and sweeping of multiple vortices. The dislocations cores concentrate the voltage drops thus providing self-tuned microscopic junctions where the tunneling creation of electron-hole pairs can take place. The results obtained from this model agree with experiment observations. The methods can be extended to other types of charge organization known under the general name of the Electronic Crystal. It takes forms of Wigner crystals at hetero-junctions and in nano-wires, CDWs in chain compounds, spin density waves in organic conductors, and stripes in doped oxides. The studied reconstruction in junctions of the CDW may be relevant also to modern efforts of the field-effect transformations in strongly correlated materials with a spontaneous symmetry breaking.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:CCSD/oai:tel.archives-ouvertes.fr:tel-00768237 |
| Date | 24 September 2012 |
| Creators | Yi, Tianyou |
| Publisher | Université Paris Sud - Paris XI |
| Source Sets | CCSD theses-EN-ligne, France |
| Language | fra |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | PhD thesis |
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