Orbital and spin character of doped carriers in infinite-layer nickelates
Matteo Rossi, Haiyu Lu, Abhishek Nag, Danfeng Li, Motoki Osada, Kyuho Lee, Bai Yang Wang, Stefano Agrestini, Mirian García‐Fernández, J. J. Kas, Yi‐De Chuang, Zhi‐Xun Shen, Harold Y. Hwang, Brian Moritz, Ke‐Jin Zhou, Thomas Devereaux, Wei-Sheng Lee
Abstract
The discovery of superconductivity in infinite-layer nickelate thin films has produced fervent theoretical research about the doping evolution of their electronic structure. Here, by means of x-ray spectroscopy and atomic multiplet calculations, the authors show that doped holes are mainly introduced in Ni sites in a spin-singlet configuration. The dominant role of the Ni 3${d}_{{x}^{2}\ensuremath{-}{y}^{2}}$ band implies that infinite-layer nickelates are likely a strongly correlated electronic system, reminiscent of their cuprate siblings.