Using femtosecond time- and angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy, we investigated the nonequilibrium dynamics of the topological insulator Bi2Se3. We studied p-type Bi2Se3, in which the metallic Dirac surface state and bulk conduction bands are unoccupied. Optical excitation leads to a metastable population at the bulk conduction band edge, which feeds a nonequilibrium population of the su...

The low-temperature structure of AC 60 (A=K, Rb) is an ordered array of polymerized C 60 chains, with magnetic properties that suggest a non-metallic ground state. We study the paramagnetic state of this phase using first-principles electronic-structure methods, and examine the magnetic fluctuations around this state using a model Hamiltonian. The electronic and magnetic properties of even this...

The low-temperature structure of AC 60 (A=K, Rb) is an ordered array of polymerized C 60 chains, with magnetic properties that suggest a non-metallic ground state. We study the paramagnetic state of this phase using first-principles electronic-structure methods, and examine the magnetic fluctuations around this state using a model Hamiltonian. The electronic and magnetic properties of even this...

We demonstrate the ultrafast photoinduced Mott transition from a charge transfer insulator to a metal in a halogen-bridged Ni-chain compound by pump-probe reflection spectroscopy. Upon the irradiation of a 130-femtosecond laser pulse, the spectral weight of the gap transition is transferred to the inner-gap region. When the photoexcitation density exceeds 0.1/Ni site, the Drude-like high-reflec...

Dias and Silvera (Research Article, 17 February 2017, p. 715) claim the observation of the Wigner-Huntington transition to metallic hydrogen at 495 gigapascals. We show that neither the claims of the record pressure nor the phase transition to a metallic state are supported by data and that the data contradict the authors' own unconfirmed previous results.

The time resolved Magnetooptical Kerr effect in the substrate-strain-induced insulating ferromagnetic phase in (Pr0.6Ca0.4)MnO3 thin films on two different substrates was measured in a magnetic field up to 1.1T. The photoinduced Kerr rotation and ellipticity show remarkably different magnetic-field dependence. From the comparison of the magnetic field dependencies of the photoinduced and static...

We describe a new possible route to the metal-insulator transition in doped semiconductors such as Si:P or Si:B. We explore the possibility that the loss of metallic transport occurs through Mott localization of electrons into a quantum spin liquid state with diffusive charge neutral "spinon" excitations. Such a quantum spin liquid state can appear as an intermediate phase between the metal and...

Effects of thermal spin disorder and excess Mn on the electronic spectrum of half-metallic NiMnSb are studied using first-principles calculations. Temperature-dependent spin disorder, introduced within the vector disordered local moment model, causes the valence band at the point to broaden and shift upwards, crossing the Fermi level and thereby closing the half-metallic gap above room temperat...

We address the nature of the Mott transition in the Hubbard model at half-filling using cluster dynamical mean field theory (DMFT). We compare cluster-DMFT results with those of single-site DMFT. We show that inclusion of the short-range correlations on top of the on-site correlations does not change the order of the transition between the paramagnetic metal and the paramagnetic Mott insulator,...