Feeling the Strain: Fields for Electronic Nematic Order

Synopsis

It is common to think of strains in solids in a somewhat passive sense, simply as the response of a material to external forces. However, for certain types of electronic order, strains of a specific symmetry can have much more important roles to play, acting as longitudinal, and even transverse, fields for the order parameter. In this talk, I will first describe how antisymmetric strain can act as a longitudinal field for electronic nematic order. I'll then go on to describe appropriate transverse fields for nematic order, including orthogonal antisymmetric strain, illustrating these points with various materials. Using such effects it becomes possible to tune materials that exhibit electronic nematic order towards a quantum phase transition. I'll explain why this is such an exciting prospect.