No Arabic abstract
We develop a nonperturbative approach to the bulk polarization of crystalline electric insulators in $dgeq1$ dimensions. Formally, we define polarization via the response to background fluxes of both charge and lattice translation symmetries. In this approach, the bulk polarization is related to properties of magnetic monopoles under translation symmetries. Specifically, in $2d$ the monopole is a source of $2pi$-flux, and the polarization is determined by the crystal momentum of the $2pi$-flux. In $3d$ the polarization is determined by the projective representation of translation symmetries on Dirac monopoles. Our approach also leads to a concrete scheme to calculate polarization in $2d$, which in principle can be applied even to strongly interacting systems. For open boundary condition, the bulk polarization leads to an altered `boundary Luttinger theorem (constraining the Fermi surface of surface states) and also to modified Lieb-Schultz-Mattis theorems on the boundary, which we derive.
We study a dynamic boundary, e.g. a mobile impurity, coupled to N independent Tomonaga-Luttinger liquids (TLLs) each with interaction parameter K. We demonstrate that for N>2 there is a quantum phase transition at K>1/2, where the TLL phases lock together at the particle position, resulting in a non-zero transconductance equal to e^2/Nh. The transition line terminates for strong coupling at K=1- 1/N, consistent with results at large N. Another type of a dynamic boundary is a superconducting (or Bose-Einstein condensate) grain coupled to N>2 TLLs, here the transition signals also the onset of a relevant Josephson coupling.
The modern theory of electric polarization has recently been extended to higher multipole moments, such as quadrupole and octupole moments. The higher electric multipole insulators are essentially topological crystalline phases protected by underlying crystalline symmetries. Henceforth, it is natural to ask what are the consequences of symmetry breaking in these higher multipole insulators. In this work, we investigate topological phases and the consequences of symmetry breaking in generalized electric quadrupole insulators. Explicitly, we generalize the Benalcazar-Bernevig-Hughes model by adding specific terms in order to break the crystalline and non-spatial symmetries. Our results show that chiral symmetry breaking induces an indirect gap phase which hides corner modes in bulk bands, ruining the topological quadrupole phase. We also demonstrate that quadrupole moments can remain quantized even when mirror symmetries are absent in a generalized model. Furthermore, it is shown that topological quadrupole phase is robust against a unique type of disorder presented in the system.
We develop a general theory of electric polarization induced by inhomogeneity in crystals. We show that contributions to polarization can be classified in powers of the gradient of the order parameter. The zeroth order contribution reduces to the well-known result obtained by King-Smith and Vanderbilt for uniform systems. The first order contribution, when expressed in a two-point formula, takes the Chern-Simons 3-form of the vector potentials derived from the Bloch wave functions. Using the relation between polarization and charge density, we demonstrate our formula by studying charge fractionalization in a two-dimensional dimer model recently proposed.
We study theoretically the transport through a single impurity in a one-channel Luttinger liquid coupled to a dissipative (ohmic) bath . For non-zero dissipation $eta$ the weak link is always a relevant perturbation which suppresses transport strongly. At zero temperature the current voltage relation of the link is $Isim exp(-E_0/eV)$ where $E_0simeta/kappa$ and $kappa$ denotes the compressibility. At non-zero temperature $T$ the linear conductance is proportional to $exp(-sqrt{{cal C}E_0/k_BT})$. The decay of Friedel oscillation saturates for distance larger than $L_{eta}sim 1/eta $ from the impurity.
We present a theory of optimal topological textures in nonlinear sigma-models with degrees of freedom living in the Grassmannian $mathrm{Gr}(M,N)$ manifold. These textures describe skyrmion lattices of $N$-component fermions in a quantising magnetic field, relevant to the physics of graphene, bilayer and other multicomponent quantum Hall systems near integer filling factors $ u>1$. We derive analytically the optimality condition, minimizing topological charge density fluctuations, for a general Grassmannian sigma model $mathrm{Gr}(M,N)$ on a sphere and a torus, together with counting arguments which show that for any filling factor and number of components there is a critical value of topological charge $d_c$ above which there are no optimal textures. Below $d_c$ a solution of the optimality condition on a torus is unique, while in the case of a sphere one has, in general, a continuum of solutions corresponding to new {it non-Goldstone} zero modes, whose degeneracy is not lifted (via a order from disorder mechanism) by any fermion interactions depending only on the distance on a sphere. We supplement our general theoretical considerations with the exact analytical results for the case of $mathrm{Gr}(2,4)$, appropriate for recent experiments in graphene.