We propose a physical mechanism to generate and selectively amplify anisotropic Rudermann-Kittel-Kasuya-Yosida (RKKY) interactions between two local spins. The idea is to combine the deflection of the carrier velocity by a P-N interface and the locking of this velocity to the carrier spin orientation via spin-orbit coupling. We provide analytical and numerical results to demonstrate this mechanism on the surface of a topological insulator P-N junction. This work identifies the P-N interface as a second knob which, together with the carrier density, enables independent control of the strength and anisotropy of the RKKY interaction over a wide range. These findings may be relevant to scalable quantum computation and two-impurity quantum criticality.
We analyse a system composed of a qubit coupled to electromagnetic fields of two high quality quantum oscillators. Particular realization of such a system is the superconducting qubit coupled to a transmission-line resonator driven by two signals with frequencies close to the resonators harmonics. One strong signal is used for exciting the system to a high energetic state while the second weak signal is applied for probing effective eigenstates of the system. We demonstrate that a description of the system dynamics as doubly dressed qubit is applicable. Experiments show that in the case of high quality resonators the energy levels and the resonance conditions can be probed even for high driving amplitudes. The interaction of the qubit with photons of two harmonics has prospects to be used as a quantum amplifier or an attenuator.
We study RKKY interactions for magnetic impurities on graphene in situations where the electronic spectrum is in the form of Landau levels. Two such situations are considered: non-uniformly strained graphene, and graphene in a real magnetic field. RKKY interactions are enhanced by the lowest Landau level, which is shown to form electron states binding with the spin impurities and add a strong non-perturbative contribution to pairwise impurity spin interactions when their separation $R$ no more than the magnetic length. Beyond this interactions are found to fall off as $1/R^3$ due to perturbative effects of the negative energy Landau levels. Based on these results, we develop simple mean-field theories for both systems, taking into account the fact that typically the density of states in the lowest Landau level is much smaller than the density of spin impurities. For the strain field case, we find that the system is formally ferrimagnetic, but with very small net moment due to the relatively low density of impurities binding electrons. The transition temperature is nevertheless enhanced by them. For real fields, the system forms a canted antiferromagnet if the field is not so strong as to pin the impurity spins along the field. The possibility that the system in this latter case supports a Kosterlitz-Thouless transition is discussed.
We study the stabilization of an isolated magnetic skyrmion in a magnetic monolayer on a nonmagnetic conducting substrate via the Ruderman-Kittel-Kasuya-Yosida (RKKY) exchange interaction. Two different types of the substrate are considered, usual normal metal and single-layer graphene. While the full stability analysis for skyrmions in the presence of the RKKY coupling requires a separate effort that is outside the scope of this work, we are able to study the radial stability (stability of a skyrmion against collapse) using variational energy estimates obtained within first-order perturbation theory, with the unperturbed Hamiltonian describing the isotropic Heisenberg magnet, and the two perturbations being the RKKY exchange and the easy-axis anisotropy. We show that a proper treatment of the long-range nature of the RKKY interaction leads to a qualitatively different stabilization scenario compared to previous studies, where solitons were stabilized by the frustrated exchange coupling (leading to terms with the fourth power of the magnetization gradients) or by the Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction (described by terms linear in the magnetization gradients). In the case of a metallic substrate, the skyrmion stabilization is possible under restrictive conditions on the Fermi surface parameters, while in the case of a graphene substrate the stabilization is naturally achieved in several geometries with a lattice-matching of graphene and magnetic layer.
The topic of quantum noise has become extremely timely due to the rise of quantum information physics and the resulting interchange of ideas between the condensed matter and AMO/quantum optics communities. This review gives a pedagogical introduction to the physics of quantum noise and its connections to quantum measurement and quantum amplification. After introducing quantum noise spectra and methods for their detection, we describe the basics of weak continuous measurements. Particular attention is given to treating the standard quantum limit on linear amplifiers and position detectors using a general linear-response framework. We show how this approach relates to the standard Haus-Caves quantum limit for a bosonic amplifier known in quantum optics, and illustrate its application for the case of electrical circuits, including mesoscopic detectors and resonant cavity detectors.
The dynamics of itinerant electrons in topological insulator (TI) thin films is investigated using a multi-band decomposition approach. We show that the electron trajectory in the 2D film is anisotropic and confined within a characteristic region. Remarkably, the confinement and anisotropy of the electron trajectory are associated with the topological phase transition of the TI system, which can be controlled by tuning the film thickness and/or applying an in-plane magnetic field. Moreover, persistent electron wavepacket oscillation can be achieved in the TI thin film system at the phase transition point, which may assist in the experimental detection of the jitter motion (Zitterbewegung). The implications of the microscopic picture of electron motion in explaining other transport-related effects, e.g., electron-mediated RKKY coupling in the TI thin film system, are also discussed.