Prof. Sergio L. Morelhao, Physics Department, Sao Paulo University (USP)
Title: "Applications of advanced X-ray methods in materials science and biophysics."
Recent Highlights
Spin-Texture Inversion in the Giant Rashba Semiconductor BiTeI
Abstract
Semiconductors with strong spin-orbit interaction as the underlying mechanism for the generation of spin-polarized electrons are showing potential for applications in spintronic devices. Unveiling the full spin texture in momentum space for such materials and its relation to the microscopic structure of the electronic wave functions is experimentally challenging and yet essential for exploiting spin-orbit effects for [...]
Prediction and Observation of an Antiferromagnetic Topological Insulator
Abstract
Magnetic topological insulators are narrow-gap semiconductor materials that combine non-trivial band topology and magnetic order. Unlike their nonmagnetic counterparts, magnetic topological insulators may have some of the surfaces gapped, which enables a number of exotic phenomena that have potential applications in spintronics, such as the quantum anomalous Hall effect and chiral Majorana fermions. So far, magnetic topological insulators have only been created by means of doping nonmagnetic topological insulators with 3d transition-metal elements; however, such an approach leads to strongly inhomogeneous magnetic and electronic properties of these materials [...]
Electron-Vibration Coupling in Molecular Materials
Abstract
Electron-phonon coupling is one of the most fundamental effects in condensed matter physics. We here demonstrate that photoelectron momentum mapping can reveal and visualize the coupling between specific vibrational modes and electronic excitations. When imaging molecular orbitals with high energy resolution, the intensity patterns of photoelectrons of the vibronic sidebands of molecular states show characteristic changes due to the distortion [...]
