2025/05/19 by Ruoshi Jiang, Zhiyu Fan, Jiang, Ruoshi +5
Earth and Planetary Sciences · Materials Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Atomic and Subatomic Physics Research #FOS: Physical sciences #High-pressure geophysics and materials #Magnetic and transport properties of perovskites and related materials #Strongly Correlated Electrons (cond-mat.str-el) #Superconductivity (cond-mat.supr-con)
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2505.13442
openalex publication_date 2025/05/19 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/30
We report an unexpected trans-proximate interlayer correlation (stronger correlation between disjoint layers than the adjacent ones) in the high-pressure phase of the recently discovered La4Ni3O10 superconductors. Accompanied by an unusual pressure-induced fractionalization of Ni2+ ionic spin from the standard spin-1 to spin-(1)/(2), this trans-proximate correlation results from the emergence of a cross-layer trimer in our multi-energy-scale derivation of the electron dynamics. The resulting low-energy effective description resembles that of the cuprates and suggests a universal superconducting mechanism in all existing nickelate and cuprate superconductors. The rare trans-proximate correlation not only explains the weaker superconductivity in comparison with the related La3Ni2O7 samples, but it also indicates a viable strategy to improve superconductivity in this trilayer nickelate by lowering layer symmetry. Such pressure-induced trans-proximate correlation is expected in many materials and examplifies the engineering of rich uncharted quantum states of matter through pressure.