No Arabic abstract
We study the role of electronic spin and valley symmetry in the quantum interference (QI) patterns of the transmission function in graphene quantum junctions. In particular, we link it to the position of the destructive QI anti-resonances. When the spin or valley symmetry is preserved, electrons with opposite spin or valley display the same interference pattern. On the other hand, when a symmetry is lifted the anti-resonances are split, with a consequent dramatic differentiation of the transport properties in the respective channel. We demonstrate rigorously this link in terms of the analytical structure of the electronic Green function which follows from the symmetries of the microscopic model and we confirm the result with numerical calculations for graphene nanoflakes. We argue that this is a generic and robust feature that can be exploited in different ways for the realization of nanoelectronic QI devices, generalizing the recent proposal of a QI-assisted spin-filtering effect [A. Valli et al. Nano Lett. 18, 2158 (2018)].
We study the transport through a molecular junction exhibiting interference effects. We show that these effects can still be observed in the presence of molecular vibrations if Coulomb repulsion is taken into account. In the Kondo regime, the conductance of the junction can be changed by several orders of magnitude by tuning the levels of the molecule, or displacing a contact between two atoms, from nearly perfect destructive interference to values of the order of 2e 2 /h expected in Kondo systems. We also show that this large conductance change is robust for reasonable temperatures and voltages for symmetric and asymmetric tunnel couplings between the source-drain electrodes and the molecular orbitals. This is relevant for the development of quantum interference effect transistors based on molecular junctions.
We perform projective quantum Monte Carlo simulations of zigzag graphene nanoribbons within a realistic model with long-range Coulomb interactions. Increasing the relative strength of nonlocal interactions with respect to the on-site repulsion does not generate a phase transition but has a number of nontrivial effects. At the single-particle level we observe a marked enhancement of the Fermi velocity at the Dirac points. At the two-particle level, spin- and charge-density-wave fluctuations compete. As a consequence, the edge magnetic moment is reduced but the edge dispersion relation increases in the sense that the single-particle gap at momentum $q=pi/|{pmb a}_1|$ grows. We attribute this to nonlocal charge fluctuations which assist the spin fluctuations to generate the aforementioned gap. In contrast, the net result of the interaction-induced renormalization of different energy scales is a constant spin-wave velocity of the edge modes. However, since the particle-hole continuum is shifted to higher energies---due to the renormalization of the Fermi velocity---Landau damping is reduced. As a result, a roughly linear spin-wave-like mode at the edge spreads out through a larger part of the Brillouin zone.
The nature of the state at low Landau-level filling factors has been a longstanding puzzle in the field of the fractional quantum Hall effect. While theoretical calculations suggest that a crystal is favored at filling factors $ ulesssim 1/6$, experiments show, at somewhat elevated temperatures, minima in the longitudinal resistance that are associated with fractional quantum Hall effect at $ u=$ 1/7, 2/11, 2/13, 3/17, 3/19, 1/9, 2/15 and 2/17, which belong to the standard sequences $ u=n/(6npm 1)$ and $ u=n/(8npm 1)$. To address this paradox, we investigate the nature of some of the low-$ u$ states, specifically $ u=1/7$, $2/13$, and $1/9$, by variational Monte Carlo, density matrix renormalization group, and exact diagonalization methods. We conclude that in the thermodynamic limit, these are likely to be incompressible fractional quantum Hall liquids, albeit with strong short-range crystalline correlations. This suggests a natural explanation for the experimentally observed behavior and a rich phase diagram that admits, in the low-disorder limit, a multitude of crystal-FQHE liquid transitions as the filling factor is reduced.
We calculate the finite temperature and non-equilibrium electric current through systems described generically at low energy by a singlet and emph{two} spin doublets for $N$ and $N pm 1$ electrons respectively, coupled asymmetrically to two conducting leads, which allows for destructive interference in the conductance. The model is suitable for studying transport in a great variety of systems such us aromatic molecules, different geometries of quantum dots and rings with applied magnetic flux. As a consequence of the interplay between interference and Kondo effect, we find changes by several orders of magnitude in the values of the conductance and its temperature dependence as the doublet level splitting is changed by some external parameter. The differential conductance at finite bias is negative for some parameters.
Using non-equilibrium Greens functions, we studied numerically the transport properties of a Josephson junction, superconductor-topological insulator-superconductor hybrid system. Our numerical calculation shows first that proximity-induced superconductivity is indeed observed in the edge states of a topological insulator adjoining two superconducting leads and second that the special characteristics of topological insulators endow the edge states with an enhanced proximity effect with a superconductor but do not forbid the bulk states to do the same. In a size-dependent analysis of the local current, it was found that a few residual bulk states can lead to measurable resistance, whereas because these bulk states spread over the whole sample, their contribution to the interference pattern is insignificant when the sample size is in the micrometer range. Based on these numerical results, it is concluded that the apparent disappearance of residual bulk states in the superconducting interference process as described in Ref. [onlinecite{HartNautrePhys2014f}] is just due to the effects of size: the contribution of the topological edge states outweighs that of the residual bulk states.