No Arabic abstract
A Lorentz invariant version of a mass-gap graphene-like planar quantum electrodynamics, the parity-preserving $U(1)times U(1)$ massive QED$_3$, exhibits attractive interaction in low-energy electron-polaron--electron-polaron $s$-wave scattering, favoring quasiparticles bound states, the $s$-wave bipolarons.
The parity-preserving $U(1)times U(1)$ massless QED$_3$ is proposed as a pristine graphene-like planar quantum electrodynamics model. The spectrum content, the degrees of freedom, spin, masses and charges of the quasiparticles (electron-polaron, hole-polaron, photon and Neel quasiparticles) which emerge from the model are discussed. The four-fold broken degeneracy of the Landau levels, similar as the one experimentally observed in pristine graphene submitted to high applied external magnetic fields, is obtained. Furthermore, the model exhibits zero-energy Landau level indicating a kind of anomalous quantum Hall effect. The electron-polaron--electron-polaron scattering potentials in $s$- and $p$-wave states mediated by photon and Neel quasiparticles are computed and analyzed. Finally, the model foresees that two electron-polarons ($s$-wave state) belonging to inequivalent $mathbf{K}$ and $mathbf{K^prime}$ points in the Brillouin zone might exhibit attractive interaction, while two electron-polarons ($p$-wave state) lying both either in $mathbf{K}$ or in $mathbf{K^prime}$ points experience repulsive interaction.
We investigate the propagation of a massless scalar field on a star graph, modeling the junction of $n$ quantum wires. The vertex of the graph is represented by a point-like impurity (defect), characterized by a one-body scattering matrix. The general case of off-critical scattering matrix with bound and/or antibound states is considered. We demonstrate that the contribution of these states to the scalar field is fixed by causality (local commutativity), which is the key point of our investigation. Two different regimes of the theory emerge at this stage. If bound sates are absent, the energy is conserved and the theory admits unitary time evolution. The behavior changes if bound states are present, because each such state generates a kind of damped harmonic oscillator in the spectrum of the field. These oscillators lead to the breakdown of time translation invariance. We study in both regimes the electromagnetic conductance of the Luttinger liquid on the quantum wire junction. We derive an explicit expression for the conductance in terms of the scattering matrix and show that antibound and bound states have a different impact, giving raise to oscillations with exponentially damped and growing amplitudes respectively.
It is widely accepted that phonon-mediated high-temperature superconductivity is impossible at ambient pressure, because of the very large effective masses of polarons/bipolarons at strong electron-phonon coupling. Here we challenge this belief by showing that strongly bound yet very light bipolarons appear for strong Peierls/Su-Schrieffer-Heeger interaction. These bipolarons also exhibit many other unconventional properties, e.g. at strong coupling there are two low-energy bipolaron bands that are stable against strong on-site Hubbard repulsion. Using numerical simulations and analytical arguments, we show that these properties result from the specific form of the phonon-mediated interaction, which is of pair-hopping instead of regular density-density type. This unusual effective interaction is bound to have non-trivial consequences for the superconducting state expected to arise at finite carrier concentrations, and should favor a large critical temperature.
In this work, we investigate the adsorption of a single cobalt atom (Co) on graphene by means of the complete active space self-consistent field approach, additionally corrected by the second-order perturbation theory. The local structure of graphene is modeled by a planar hydrocarbon cluster (C$_{24}$H$_{12}$). Systematic treatment of the electron correlations and the possibility to study excited states allow us to reproduce the potential energy curves for different electronic configurations of Co. We find that upon approaching the surface, the ground-state configuration of Co undergoes several transitions, giving rise to two stable states. The first corresponds to the physisorption of the adatom in the high-spin $3d^74s^2$ ($S=3/2$) configuration, while the second results from the chemical bonding formed by strong orbital hybridization, leading to the low-spin $3d^9$ ($S=1/2$) state. Due to the instability of the $3d^9$ configuration, the adsorption energy of Co is small in both cases and does not exceed 0.35 eV. We analyze the obtained results in terms of a simple model Hamiltonian that involves Coulomb repulsion ($U$) and exchange coupling ($J$) parameters for the 3$d$ shell of Co, which we estimate from first-principles calculations. We show that while the exchange interaction remains constant upon adsorption ($simeq1.1$ eV), the Coulomb repulsion significantly reduces for decreasing distances (from 5.3 to 2.6$pm$0.2 eV). The screening of $U$ favors higher occupations of the 3$d$ shell and thus is largely responsible for the interconfigurational transitions of Co. Finally, we discuss the limitations of the approaches that are based on density functional theory with respect to transition metal atoms on graphene, and we conclude that a proper account of the electron correlations is crucial for the description of adsorption in such systems.
We study low temperature electron transport in p-wave superconductor-insulator-normal metal junctions. In diffusive metals the p-wave component of the order parameter decays exponentially at distances larger than the mean free path $l$. At the superconductor-normal metal boundary, due to spin-orbit interaction, there is a triplet to singlet conversion of the superconducting order parameter. The singlet component survives at distances much larger than $l$ from the boundary. It is this component that controls the low temperature resistance of the junctions. As a result, the resistance of the system strongly depends on the angle between the insulating boundary and the ${bf d}$-vector characterizing the spin structure of the triplet superconducting order parameter. We also analyze the spatial dependence of the electric potential in the presence of the current, and show that the electric field is suppressed in the insulating boundary as well as in the normal metal at distances of order of the coherence length away from the boundary. This is very different from the case of the normal metal-insulator-normal metal junctions, where the voltage drop takes place predominantly at the insulator.