Evidence for impurity-induced frustration in La2CuO4

Impurity Induced States

New mechanism for impurity-induced step bunching

– Codeposition of impurities during the growth of a vicinal surface leads to an impurity concentration gradient on the terraces, which induces corresponding gradients in the mobility and the chemical potential of the adatoms. Here it is shown that the two types of gradients have opposing effects on the stability of the surface: Step bunching can be caused by impurities which either lower the ad...

Spin glass state in doped La2CuO4

The lightly doped La2CuO4 of the high temperature superconducting Cu oxides shows spin glass behavior at very low temperatures, which reflects the effects of quantum fluctuations and frustration upon doping. Recent neutron scattering experiments revealed a formation of spin stripes at the same low concentration of doping. A specific relation between the two important properties of spin glass be...

Electrophobic interaction induced impurity clustering in metals

We introduce the concept of electrophobic interaction, analogous to hydrophobic interaction, for describing the behavior of impurity atoms in a metal, a “solvent of electrons”. We demonstrate that there exists a form of electrophobic interaction between impurities with closed electron shell structure, which governs their dissolution behavior in a metal. Using He, Be and Ar as examples, we predi...

Impurity-induced spin-orbit coupling in graphene.

We study the effect of impurities in inducing spin-orbit coupling in graphene. We show that the sp3 distortion induced by an impurity can lead to a large increase in the spin-orbit coupling with a value comparable to the one found in diamond and other zinc-blende semiconductors. The spin-flip scattering produced by the impurity leads to spin scattering lengths of the order found in recent exper...