No Arabic abstract
We study the multicritical behavior for the semimetal-insulator transitions on graphenes honeycomb lattice using the Gross-Neveu-Yukawa effective theory with two order parameters: the SO(3) (Heisenberg) order parameter describes the antiferromagnetic transition, and the $mathbb{Z}_2$ (Ising) order parameter describes the transition to a staggered density state. Their coupling induces multicritical behavior which determines the structure of the phase diagram close to the multicritical point. Depending on the number of fermion flavors $N_f$ and working in the perturbative regime in vicinity of three (spatial) dimensions, we observe first order or continuous phase transitions at the multicritical point. For the graphene case of $N_f=2$ and within our low order approximation, the phase diagram displays a tetracritical structure.
Based on the four-band continuum model, we study the ordered-current state (OCS) for electrons in bilayer graphene at the charge neutrality point. The present work resolves the puzzles that (a) the energy gap increases significantly with increasing the magnetic field $B$, (b) the energy gap can be closed by the external electric field of either polarization, and (c) the particle-hole spectrum is asymmetric in the presence of $B$, all these as observed by the experiment. We also present the prediction of the hysteresis energy gap behavior with varying $B$, which explains the existing experimental observation on the electric conductance at weak $B$. The large energy gap of the OCS is shown to originate from the disappearance of Landau levels of $n$ = 0 and 1 states in conduction/valence band. By comparing with the existing models and the experiments, we conclude that the OCS is a possible ground state of electrons in bilayer graphene.
Electrons in artificial lattices enable explorations of the impact of repulsive Coulomb interactions in a tunable system. We have trapped two-dimensional electrons belonging to a gallium arsenide quantum well in a nanofabricated lattice with honeycomb geometry. We probe the excitation spectrum in a magnetic field identifying novel collective modes that emerge from the Coulomb interaction in the artificial lattice as predicted by the Mott-Hubbard model. These observations allow us to determine the Hubbard gap and suggest the existence of a novel Coulomb-driven ground state. This approach offers new venues for the study of quantum phenomena in a controllable solid-state system.
The unique properties of massless Dirac fermions lead to many remarkable phenomena, and a major challenge towards their technological exploitation is the development of materials with tunable Dirac states. Here we show that this goal may be achieved by using electron-electron correlations in the quasi 2D system BaNiS2. By means of ARPES and first-principles calculations, we unveil the formation of Dirac states by the hybridization of correlated d-electrons with ligand orbitals, which provides an effective band crossing in the presence of a nonsymmorphic symmetry. We show that this mechanism forms Dirac cones extending over a wide energy window around the Fermi level, and that node location in k-space can vary along the Gamma - M symmetry line, instead of being pinned at symmetry points as commonly found in graphene and other Dirac materials. These unique characteristics make BaNiS2 an ideal playground to explore electronic correlation effects in Dirac materials.
We propose an analytical approach to high-harmonic generation (HHG) for nonperturbative low-frequency and high-intensity fields based on the (Jeffreys-)Wentzel-Kramers-Brillouin (WKB) approximation. By properly taking into account Stokes phenomena of WKB solutions, we obtain wavefunctions that systematically include repetitive dynamics of production and acceleration of electron-hole pairs and quantum interference due to phase accumulation between different pair production times (St{u}ckelberg phase). Using the obtained wavefunctions without relying on any phenomenological assumptions, we explicitly compute electric current (including intra- and inter-band contributions) as the source of HHG for a massive Dirac system in (1+1)-dimensions under an ac electric field. We demonstrate that the WKB approximation agrees well with numerical results obtained by solving the time-dependent Schr{o}dinger equation and point out that the quantum interference is important in HHG. We also predict in the deep nonperturbative regime that (1) harmonic intensities oscillate with respect to electric-field amplitude and frequency, with a period determined by the St{u}ckelberg phase; (2) cutoff order of HHG is determined by the Keldysh parameter; and that (3) non-integer harmonics, controlled by the St{u}ckelberg phase, appear as a transient effect.
Magic-angle twisted bilayer graphene has recently become a thriving material platform realizing correlated electron phenomena taking place within its topological flat bands. Several numerical and analytical methods have been applied to understand the correlated phases therein, revealing some similarity with the quantum Hall physics. In this work, we provide a Mott-Hubbard perspective for the TBG system. Employing the large-scale density matrix renormalization group on the lattice model containing the projected Coulomb interactions only, we identify a first-order quantum phase transition between the insulating stripe phase and the quantum anomalous Hall state with the Chern number of $pm 1$. Our results not only shed light on the mechanism of the quantum anomalous Hall state discovered at three-quarters filling, but also provide an example of the topological Mott insulator, i.e., the quantum anomalous Hall state in the strong coupling limit.