No Arabic abstract
The phenomenon of group motion is common in nature, ranging from the schools of fish, birds and insects, to avalanches, landslides and sand drift. If we treat objects as collectively moving particles, such phenomena can be studied from a physical point of view, and the research on many-body systems has proved that marvelous effects can arise from the simplest individuals. The motion of numerous individuals presents different dynamic phases related to the ordering of the system. However, it is usually difficult to study the dynamic ordering and their transitions through experiments. Electron bubble states formed in a two-dimensional electron gas, as a type of electron solids, can be driven by an external electric field and provide a platform to study the dynamic collective behaviors. Here, we demonstrate that noise spectrum is a powerful method to investigate the dynamics of bubble states. We observed not only the phenomena from dynamically ordered and disordered structures, but also unexpected alternations between them. Our results show that a dissipative system can convert between chaotic structures and ordered structures when tuning global parameters, which is concealed in conventional transport measurements of resistance or conductance. Moreover, charging the objects to study electrical noise spectrum in collective motions can be an additional approach to revealing dynamic ordering transitions.
The traditional concept of phase transitions has, in recent years, been widened in a number of interesting ways. The concept of a topological phase transition separating phases with a different ground state topology, rather than phases of different symmetries, has become a large widely studied field in its own right. Additionally an analogy between phase transitions, described by non-analyticities in the derivatives of the free energy, and non-analyticities which occur in dynamically evolving correlation functions has been drawn. These are called dynamical phase transitions and one is often now far from the equilibrium situation. In these short lecture notes we will give a brief overview of the history of these concepts, focusing in particular on the way in which dynamical phase transitions themselves can be used to shed light on topological phase transitions and topological phases. We will go on to focus, first, on the effect which the topologically protected edge states, which are one of the interesting consequences of topological phases, have on dynamical phase transitions. Second we will consider what happens in the experimentally relevant situations where the system begins either in a thermal state rather than the ground state, or exchanges particles with an external environment.
We have studied the liquid - solid (L-S) phase transition of ^4He confined in nanoporous glass, which has interconnected nanopores of 2.5 nm in diameter. The L-S boundary is determined by the measurements of pressure and thermal response during slow cooling and warming. Below 1 K, the freezing pressure is elevated to 1.2 MPa from the bulk freezing pressure, and appears to be independent of temperature. The T-independent L-S boundary implies the existence of a localized Bose-Einstein condensation state, in which long-range superfluid coherence is destroyed by narrowness of the nanopores and random potential.
The Kitaev model of spin-1/2 on a honeycomb lattice supports degenerate topological ground states and may be useful in topological quantum computation. Na$_{2}$IrO$_{3}$ with honeycomb lattice of Ir ions have been extensively studied as candidates for the realization of the this model, due to the effective $J_{text{eff}}=1/2$ low-energy excitations produced by spin-orbit and crystal-field effect. As the eventual realization of Kitaev model has remained evasive, it is highly desirable and challenging to tune the candidate materials toward such end. It is well known external pressure often leads to dramatic changes to the geometric and electronic structure of materials. In this work, the high pressure phase diagram of Na$_{2}$IrO$_{3}$ is examined by first-principles calculations. It is found that Na$_{2}$IrO$_{3}$ undergoes a sequence of structural and magnetic phase transitions, from the magnetically ordered phase with space group $C2/m$ to two bond-ordered non-magnetic phases. The low-energy excitations in these high-pressure phases can be well described by the $J_{text{eff}}=1/2$ states.
We have calculated the contribution of intersubband transitions to the third order optical nonlinear susceptibility, $chi^{(3)}(omega,omega,omega)$ for nonresonant as well as resonant third harmonic generation and $chi^{(3)}(omega,-omega,omega)$ for nonlinear refraction and absorption. As examples, we consider InAs/AlSb and GaAs/GaAlAs quantum wells. The effects of finite barrier height, energy band nonparabolicity, and high carrier concentrations are included. It is shown that quantum confinement, rather than the band nonparabolicity, is responsible for high values of nonresonant $chi^{(3)}_{zzzz}$. Very high values of $chi^{(3)}_{zzzz}$ are obtained for third harmonic generation and two photon absorption for incident wavelength near 10.6 $mu$m. Intensity dependence of refractive index and of absorption co-efficient is also discussed for intensity well above the saturation intensity. Effective medium theory is used to incorporate the collective effects.
Twisted bilayer graphene near the magic angle exhibits remarkably rich electron correlation physics, displaying insulating, magnetic, and superconducting phases. Here, using measurements of the local electronic compressibility, we reveal that these phases originate from a high-energy state with an unusual sequence of band populations. As carriers are added to the system, rather than filling all the four spin and valley flavors equally, we find that the population occurs through a sequence of sharp phase transitions, which appear as strong asymmetric jumps of the electronic compressibility near integer fillings of the moire lattice. At each transition, a single spin/valley flavor takes all the carriers from its partially filled peers, resetting them back to the vicinity of the charge neutrality point. As a result, the Dirac-like character observed near the charge neutrality reappears after each integer filling. Measurement of the in-plane magnetic field dependence of the chemical potential near filling factor one reveals a large spontaneous magnetization, further substantiating this picture of a cascade of symmetry breakings. The sequence of phase transitions and Dirac revivals is observed at temperatures well above the onset of the superconducting and correlated insulating states. This indicates that the state we reveal here, with its strongly broken electronic flavor symmetry and revived Dirac-like electronic character, is a key player in the physics of magic angle graphene, forming the parent state out of which the more fragile superconducting and correlated insulating ground states emerge.