No Arabic abstract
We study the quantum many-body instabilities of interacting electrons with SU(2)$times$SU(2) symmetry in spin and orbital degrees of freedom on the triangular lattice near van-Hove filling. Our work is motivated by effective models for the flat bands in hexagonal moire heterostructures like twisted bilayer boron nitride and trilayer graphene-boron nitride systems. We consider an extended Hubbard model including onsite Hubbard and Hunds couplings, as well as nearest-neighbor exchange interactions and analyze the different ordering tendencies with the help of an unbiased functional renormalization group approach. We find three classes of instabilities controlled by the filling and bare interactions. For a nested Fermi surface at van-Hove filling, Hund-like couplings induce a weak instability towards spin or orbital density wave phases. An SU(4) exchange interaction moves the system towards a Chern insulator, which is robust with respect to perturbations from Hund-like interactions or deviations from perfect nesting. Further, in an extended range of fillings and interactions, we find topological $dpm id$ and (spin-singlet)-(orbital-singlet) $f$-wave superconductivity.
We examine antiferromagnetic and d-wave superfluid phases of cold fermionic atoms with repulsive interactions in a two-dimensional optical lattice combined with a harmonic trapping potential. For experimentally realistic parameters, the trapping potential leads to the coexistence of magnetic and superfluid ordered phases with the normal phase. We study the intriguing shell structures arising from the competition between the magnetic and superfluid order as a function of the filling fraction. In certain cases antiferromagnetism induce superfluidity by charge redistributions. We furthermore demonstrate how these shell structures can be detected as distinct anti-bunching dips and pairing peaks in the density-density correlation function probed in expansion experiments.
The phase diagram of the two-dimensional extended one-band U-V-J Hubbard model is considered within a mean-field approximation and two- and many-patch renormalization group (RG) approaches near the van Hove band fillings. At small t and J>0 mean-field and many-patch RG approaches give similar results for the leading spin-density-wave (SDW) instability, while the two-patch RG approach, which predicts a wide region of charge-flux (CF) phase becomes unreliable due to nesting effect. At the same time, there is a complex competition between SDW, CF phases, and d-wave superconductivity in two- and many-patch RG approaches. While the spin-flux (SF) phase is not stable at the mean-field level, it is identified as a possible ground state at J<0 in both RG approaches. With increasing t the results of all three approaches merge: d-wave superconductivity at J>0 and ferromagnetism at J<0 become the leading instabilities. For large enough V the charge-density-wave (CDW) state occurs.
Recently, superconductivity was discovered at very low densities in slightly misaligned graphene multilayers. Surprisingly, despite extremely low electronic density (about $10^{-4}$ electrons per unit cell), these systems realize strong-coupling superconductivity, with the transition temperature being a large fraction of the Fermi energy ($T_csim 0.1 epsilon_F$). Here we propose a qualitative explanation for this remarkable phenomenon, highlighting similarities and qualitative differences with the conventional uniform high-density superconductivity. Most importantly, we find that periodic superimposed potential generically enhances local interactions relative to nonlocal (for instance, Coulomb) interactions. In addition, the density of states is enhanced as well, exponentially in modulation strength for low lying bands in some cases. Combination of these two effects makes moire systems natural intermediate or strong-coupled superconductors, with potential for very high transition temperatures.
We present thermodynamic and neutron data on Ni_3V_2O_8, a spin-1 system on a kagome staircase. The extreme degeneracy of the kagome antiferromagnet is lifted to produce two incommensurate phases at finite T - one amplitude modulated, the other helical - plus a commensurate canted antiferromagnet for T ->0. The H-T phase diagram is described by a model of competing first and second neighbor interactions with smaller anisotropic terms. Ni_3V_2O_8 thus provides an elegant example of order from sub leading interactions in a highly frustrated system
When two-dimensional atomic crystals are brought into close proximity to form a van der Waals heterostructure, neighbouring crystals can start influencing each others electronic properties. Of particular interest is the situation when the periodicity of the two crystals closely match and a moire pattern forms, which results in specific electron scattering, reconstruction of electronic and excitonic spectra, crystal reconstruction, and many other effects. Thus, formation of moire patterns is a viable tool of controlling the electronic properties of 2D materials. At the same time, the difference in the interatomic distances for the two crystals combined, determines the range in which the electronic spectrum is reconstructed, and thus is a barrier to the low energy regime. Here we present a way which allows spectrum reconstruction at all energies. By using graphene which is aligned simultaneously to two hexagonal boron nitride layers, one can make electrons scatter in the differential moire pattern, which can have arbitrarily small wavevector and, thus results in spectrum reconstruction at arbitrarily low energies. We demonstrate that the strength of such a potential relies crucially on the atomic reconstruction of graphene within the differential moire super-cell. Such structures offer further opportunity in tuning the electronic spectra of two-dimensional materials.