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Magnetoelectric (ME) materials displaying strong magnetically induced polarization have attracted considerable interest due to their potential applications in spintronics and various fast electrically controlled magnetic devices. CaMn$_7$O$_{12}$ (CMO) stands out for its giant spin-induced ferroelectric polarization. However, the origin of the induced electric polarization in CMO remains highly controversial and continues to be a subject of ongoing debate. In this paper, through room temperature X-ray powder diffraction (XRPD), temperature-dependent magnetic susceptibility, and thermally stimulated depolarizing current (TSDC) measurements, we provide experimental evidence for a route to tune the magnetically induced polarization by modifying the exchange-striction in CMO via Sr-doping. Our findings demonstrate that the large and broad current peaks observed near the first magnetic phase transition ($T_N1 \sim 90$ K) indicate contributions to the TSDC density from both extrinsic thermally stimulated depolarization processes and intrinsic pyroelectric current arising from magnetically induced polarization changes. We suggest that this reduction in induced electric polarization in CMO originates from the increase in the Mn$^{3+}$ -- O -- Mn$^{4+}$ bond angle due to Sr$^{2+}$ doping, weakening the exchange-striction interaction. Meanwhile, the Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya (DM) effect determines the direction of the induced electric polarization. Our result sheds light on understanding the intriguing giant-induced polarization in CMO and similar compounds with complex magnetic structures.

The Skyrmion Hall Effect (SkHE) observed in ferromagnetic (FM) and ferrimagnetic (FI) skyrmions traveling due to a spin-polarized current can be a problematic issue when it comes to technological applications. By investigating the properties of FI skyrmions in racetracks through computational simulations, we have described the nature of their movement based on the relative values of the exchange, Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya, and anisotropy coupling constants. Beyond that, using a design strategy, a magnetic channel-like nano-device is proposed in which a spin-polarized current protocol is created to successfully control the channel on which the skyrmion will travel without the adverse SkHE. Additionally, a simple adjustment in the current strength can modify the skyrmion position sideways between different parallel channels in the nanostripe., Comment: 10 pages, 9 figures

We report on the microwave, terahertz (THz), infrared and Raman spectroscopic studies of $BiMn_{7}O_{12}$ ceramics, shedding more light into the nature of two structural phase transitions and their possible relation with ferroelectricity in this compound. We observed a softening of one polar phonon in the THz range on cooling towards 460 and 300 K, i.e., temperatures at which $BiMn_{7}O_{12}$ undergoes subsequent structural phase transitions from monoclinic $\textit{I2/m}$ to polar monoclinic $\textit{Im}$ and triclinic $\textit{P1}$ phases. The soft phonon causes dielectric anomalies typical for displacive ferroelectric phase transitions. Microwave measurements performed at 5.8 GHz up to 400 K qualitatively confirmed not only the dielectric anomaly at 300 K, but also revealed two other weak dielectric anomalies near the magnetic phase transitions at 60 K and 28 K. This evidences the multiferroic nature of the low-temperature phases, although the relatively high conductivity in the kHz and Hz spectral range prevented us from directly measuring the permittivity and ferroelectric polarization. Some Raman modes sense the magnetic phase transitions occurring near 60 and 25 K, showing that spin-phonon coupling is relevant in this compound and in this temperature range. The deviation of the Mn-O stretching mode frequency from the anharmonic temperature behavior was successfully explained by the spin correlation function calculated from the magnetic contribution to the specific heat.

The correlation between static magnetoelectric coupling and magnetic structure was investigated in $TbMn_{0.98}Fe_{0.02}O_{3}$ with magnetic field up to 8 T and down to 2 K. Single-crystal neutron diffraction experiments reveal a substantial increase in the temperature dependence of the incommensurate modulation wave vector of the antiferromagnetic phase as the magnetic field strength increases. Magnetic field-dependent pyroelectric current measurements revealed significantly higher magnetoelectric coupling at magnetic fields below 4 T than in pure TbMnO3. This is due to the higher sensitivity of the incommensurably modulated cycloid structure to weak magnetic fields. Detailed analysis of our data confirmed that the ferroelectric polarization is induced by inverse Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction for magnetic field strength up to 4 T, but at higher fields a departure from theoretical predictions is ascertained, giving evidence for an additional, as yet misunderstood, contribution to magnetoelectric coupling. It shows that a small 2% substitution of Mn3+ by Fe3+ has a strong impact on the magnetic structure, promoting the destabilization of the incommensurably modulated magnetic cycloidal structure of $TbMnO_{3}$ in a magnetic field above 5 T. We demonstrate that the magnetoelectric coupling magnitude can be tuned through suitable substitutional elements, even at low level, inducing local lattice distortions with different electronic and magnetic properties.

We report a comprehensive study of the low-level substitution of Mn$^{3+}$ by Fe$^{3+}$ effect on the static and dynamic magnetoelectric coupling in TbMn$_{1-x}$Fe$_x$O$_3$ ($x=0$, 0.02 and 0.04). The cationic substitution has a large impact on the balance between competitive magnetic interactions and, as a result, on the stabilization of the magnetic structures and ferroelectric phase at low temperatures. Low-lying electromagnon excitation is activated in the cycloidal modulated antiferromagnetic and ferroelectric phase in TbMnO$_3$, while it is observed up to TN in the Fe-substituted compounds, pointing for different mechanisms for static and dynamic magnetoelectric coupling. A second electrically active excitation near 40 cm$^{-1}$ is explained by means of Tb3+ crystal-field effects. This excitation is observed up to room temperature, and exhibits a remarkable 15 cm$^{-1}$ downshift on cooling in Fe-substituted compounds. Both electromagnon and crystal-field excitations are found to be coupled to the polar phonons with frequencies up to 250 cm$^{-1}$. Raman spectroscopy reveals a spin-phonon coupling below TN in pure TbMnO$_3$, but the temperature where the coupling start to be relevant increases with Fe concentration and reaches 100 K in TbMn$_{0.96}$Fe$_{0.04}$O$_3$. The anomalies in the T-dependence of magnetic susceptibility above TN are well accounted by spin-phonon coupling and crystal-field excitation, coupled to oxygen motions.

A realization of the composite Higgs scenario in the context of the effective model with the $SU(2)_L\times U(1)_R$ symmetric four-Fermi interactions proposed by Miransky, Tanabashi and Yamawaki is studied. The model implements Nambu's mechanism of dynamical electroweak symmetry breaking leading to the formation of $\bar tt$ and $\bar bb$ quark condensates. We explore the vacuum structure and spectrum of the model by using the Schwinger proper-time method. As a direct consequence of this mechanism, the Higgs acquires a mass in accord with its experimental value. The present prediction essentially differs from the known overestimated value, $m_\chi= 2m_t$, making more favourable the top condensation scenario presented here. The mass formulas for the members of the second Higgs doublet are also obtained. The Nambu sum rule is discussed. It is shown that the anomalous $U(1)_A$ symmetry breaking modifies this rule at next to leading order in $1/N_c$., Comment: 14 pages, version to appear in EPJC

This work reports on the pressure dependence of the octahedra tilts and mean Fe-O bond lengths in RFeO3 (R=Nd, Sm, Eu, Gd, Tb and Dy), determined through synchrotron X-ray diffraction and Raman scattering, and their role on the pressure induced phase transition displayed by all of these compounds. For larger rare-earth cations (Nd-Sm), both anti- and in-phase octahedra tilting decrease as pressure increases, whereas the reverse behavior is observed for smaller ones (Gd-Dy). EuFeO3 stands at the borderline, as the tilts are pressure independent. For the compounds where the tilts increase with pressure, the FeO6 octahedra are compressed at lower rates than for those ones exhibiting opposite pressure tilt dependence. The crossover between the two opposite pressure behaviors is discussed and faced with the rules grounded on the current theoretical approaches. The similarity of the pressure-induced isostructural insulator-to-metal phase transition, observed in the whole series, point out that the tilts play a minor role in its driving mechanisms. A clear relationship between octahedra compressibility and critical pressure is ascertained., Comment: 25 pages (including Supplemental Information), 12 figures and 4 tables

We analyze the thermodynamical properties of a system of strongly interacting particles at vanishing quark chemical potential in the framework of a recently developed extension of the Polyakov-Nambu-Jona-Lasinio Model. In addition to eight quark interactions terms, non-canonical terms which explicitly break chiral symmetry up to the same order in a $1/N_c$ expansion ($N_c$ number of colors) are included. A recently proposed Polyakov potential is considered and the results are compared to lattice QCD data resulting in a favorable scenario for the recent model variants., Comment: To appear in the proceedings of "8th International Conference on Quarks and Nuclear Physics (QNP2018)"

This paper presents a study on the reduction of the sampling frequency of the current signals of an induction motor, the reductions are performed by means time-decimation technique for digital signal processing. We have used the Fast Fourier Transform to obtain the fault signal spectrum of broken bars. The results have shown how the decimation technique significantly reduces the number of operations and the time required to calculate the Fast Fourier Transform without loss of information. This approach provides a better performance of embedded systems for fault diagnosis based on characteristic of amplitude signal modulation., Comment: in Portuguese

We analyse the effects of the light and strange current quark masses on the phase diagram of QCD at finite temperature and vanishing baryonic chemical potential, computing the speed of sound, the trace anomaly of the energy momentum tensor and the fluctuations and correlations of the conserved charges associated to baryonic, electric and strangeness numbers. The framework is a known extension of the three flavor Nambu Jona Lasinio model, which includes the full set of explicit chiral symmetry breaking interactions (ESB) up to the same order in large $N_c$ counting as the 't Hooft flavor mixing terms and eight quark interactions. It is shown that the ESB terms are relevant for the description of a soft region in the system's speed of sound and overall slope behavior of the observables computed. At the same time the role of the 8q interactions gets highlighted. The model extension with the Polyakov loop is considered and the results are compared to lattice QCD data., Comment: 15 pages, 10 figures

Extensions of the NJL model which go beyond the original 4-quark interaction, which drives the dynamical mass generation, have proven to be quite successful in describing low energy hadronic phenomenology. The inclusion of 8-quark interaction terms solved a metastability problem of the effective potential introduced by the inclusion of the 6-quark 't Hooft determinant term in the 3-flavor version of the model (needed to eliminate the unwanted U(1) axial symmetry) . This model, that has proven to be quite powerful and feature-rich, has been expanded to include all the spin-0 terms, without and with explicit chiral symmetry breaking, which are of the same order as the 't Hooft flavor determinant in a 1/Nc expansion resulting in an unprecedented success in reproducing the low lying scalar and pseudoscalar meson spectra. This success can be seen as a result of the inclusion of the full chiral symmetry breaking pattern. The two critical endpoints which are obtained in the temperature/chemical potential phase diagram are shifted to lower chemical potential and higher temperature when the effect of magnetic field is taken into account. For the studied magnetic field strengths (in the range $eH=0-0.4~GeV^2$) no significant extra transitions are seen to appear., Comment: Submitted for the proceedings of Hadron 2017 -XVII International Conference on Hadron Spectroscopy and Structure, September 25th-29th 2017, Salamanca, Spain

Here we study the resistive switching (RS) effect that emerges when ferroelectric BaTiO$_{3}$ (BTO) and few-layers MoSe$_{2}$ are combined in one single structure. The C-V loops reveal the ferroelectric nature of both Al/Si/SiO$_{x}$/BTO/Au and Al/Si/SiO$_{x}$/MoSe$_{2}$/BTO/Au structures and the high quality of the SiO$_{x}$/MoSe$_{2}$ interface in the Al/Si/SiOx/MoSe$_{2}$/Au structure. Al/Si/SiO$_{x}$/MoSe$_{2}$/BTO/Au hybrid structures show the electroforming free resistive switching that is explained on the basis of the modulation of the potential distribution at the MoSe$_{2}$/BTO interface via ferroelectric polarization flipping. This structure shows promising resistive switching characteristics with switching ratio of $\approx{}$10$^{2}$ and a stable memory window, which are highly required for memory applications.

A generalized 3 flavor Nambu-Jona--Lasinio Lagrangian including the explicit chiral symmetry breaking interactions which contribute at the same order in the large $1/N_c$ counting as the $U_A(1)$ 't Hooft flavor determinant is considered to obtain the mixing angles in the $\pi^0-\eta-\eta'$ system and related current quark mass ratios in close agreement with phenomenological values. At the same time an accurate ordering and magnitude of the splitting of states in the low lying pseudoscalar nonet is obtained., Comment: 6 pages, 4 tables, presented at the workshop "Excited QCD 2016", 05-12 March 2016, Costa da Caparica, Portugal. Submitted to Acta Phys. Pol. B

We present the magnetic phase diagram of TbMn1-xFexO3 substitutional solid solution in the whole concentration range 0 <= x <= 1 as determined from magnetization and specific heat measurements. We have found that the dominant magnetic ion in the concentration range 0 <= x < 0.3 is manganese, while iron ions do not create independent magnetic structure, but strongly affect magnetic properties of the parent compound by reducing transition to magnetically ordered state and transition into a cycloidal phase. The magnetism in the concentration range 0.3 < x <= 1 is driven by the Fe sublattice. The manganese ions again do not order in long range magnetic ordered state, but stabilize four different magnetic structures of Fe sublattice above 2 K. The magnetic ordering of Tb sublattice was observed only on parent compounds TbMnO3 and TbFeO3 and for doping level below 0.1, or over 0.9.

The present work reports the study of the optimized processing conditions of Bi0.9La0.1Fe0.9Mn0.1O3 thin films, grown by RF sputtering on platinum metalized silicon substrates. The combination of deposition at relatively low substrate temperature followed by adequate ex situ annealing leads to thin films with smooth surface morphology and the formation of a high-quality monophasic layer, with the (100)c preferable orientation. The annealed films show ferroelectric imprint.

This work addresses the effect of substituting Mn$^{3+}$ by Fe$^{3+}$ at the octahedral site of TbMnO$_3$ on the magnetic phase sequence, ferroelectric and magnetoelectric properties, keeping the Fe$^{3+}$ concentration below 5%. The temperature dependence of the specific heat, dielectric permittivity and electric polarization was studied as a function of Fe$^{3+}$ concentration and applied magnetic field. From the experimental results a strong decrease of the electric polarization with increasing Fe$^{3+}$ substitution is observed, vanishing above a concentration of 4%. However, within this range, a significant increase of the magnetic sensitivity of the electric polarization is obtained by increasing Fe$^{3+}$ concentration. Above that value, a non-polar, weak ferromagnetic phase emerges, in good agreement with the predictions of the Dzyalowshinskii-Moriya model. This behavior reveals the crucial effect of Fe$^{3+}$ substitution in octahedral sites on the magnetic phase sequence, polar and magnetoelectric behavior of the TbMn$_{1-x}$Fe$_x$O$_3$ system. From the results obtained in this work, it is understood that this behavior is not associated with the eg electronic configuration, but instead to the competition between ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic interactions, which is very sensitive to both local fields and distortions., Comment: 11 pages, 4 figures

We report the analysis of radial characteristics of the flow of granular material through a conical hopper. The discharge is simulated for various orifice sizes and hopper opening angles. Velocity profiles are measured along two radial lines from the hopper cone vertex: along the main axis of the cone and along its wall. An approximate power law dependence on the distance from the orifice is observed for both profiles, although differences between them can be noted. In order to quantify these differences, we propose a Local Mass Flow index that is a promising tool in the direction of a more reliable classification of the flow regimes in hoppers.

The phase diagram of cold dense quark matter is studied using the 't Hooft extended Nambu--Jona-Lasinio Model applied to the light quark sector with a finite current mass for the strange quark (up and down are considered in the chiral limit). By relaxing the traditional uniformity assumptions and considering a modulated light quark condensate background we investigate the possible existence of non-uniform phases in this region of the phase diagram. The effects of changes in the coupling strengths of the model are studied and it is shown that the inclusion of flavour mixing combined with the finite current mass of the strange quark catalyses the appearance of the non-uniform phases, extending the domain for their existence., Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures. To appear in the Conference Proceedings for XI Quark Confinement and the Hadron Spectrum, St. Petersburg, Russia, September 8-12 2014