In this work we investigate whether the Kitaev honeycomb model can serve as a starting point to realize the intriguing physics of the Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev model. The starting point is to strain the system which leads to flat bands reminiscent of Landau
levels, thereby quenching the kinetic energy. The presence of weak residual perturbations, such as Heisenberg interactions and the $gamma$-term, creates effective interactions between the Majorana modes when projected into the flux-free sector. Taking into account a disordered boundary results in an interaction that is effectively random. While we find that in a strained nearest-neighbor Kitaev honeycomb model it is unlikely to find the Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev model, it appears possible to realize a bipartite variant with similar properties. We furthermore argue that next-nearest-neighbor terms can lead to actual Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev physics, if large enough.
Hall viscosity, also known as the Lorentz shear modulus, has been proposed as a topological property of a quantum Hall fluid. Using a recent formulation of the composite fermion theory on the torus, we evaluate the Hall viscosities for a large number
of fractional quantum Hall states at filling factors of the form $ u=n/(2pnpm 1)$, where $n$ and $p$ are integers, from the explicit wave functions for these states. The calculated Hall viscosities $eta^A$ agree with the expression $eta^A=(hbar/4) {cal S}rho$, where $rho$ is the density and ${cal S}=2ppm n$ is the shift in the spherical geometry. We discuss the role of modular invariance of the wave functions, of the center-of-mass momentum, and also of the lowest-Landau-level projection. Finally, we show that the Hall viscosity for $ u={nover 2pn+1}$ may be derived analytically from the microscopic wave functions, provided that the overall normalization factor satisfies a certain behavior in the thermodynamic limit. This derivation should be applicable to a class of states in the parton construction, which are products of integer quantum Hall states with magnetic fields pointing in the same direction.
We investigate the Hall conductivity in a Sierpinski carpet, a fractal of Hausdorff dimension $d_f=ln(8)/ln(3) approx 1.893$, subject to a perpendicular magnetic field. We compute the Hall conductivity using linear response and the recursive Green fu
nction method. Our main finding is that edge modes, corresponding to a maximum Hall conductivity of at least $sigma_{xy}=pm frac{e^2}{h}$, seems to be generically present for arbitrary finite field strength, no mater how one approaches the thermodynamic limit of the fractal. We discuss a simple counting rule to determine the maximal number of edge modes in terms of paths through the system with a fixed width. This quantized edge conductance, as in the case of the conventional Hofstadter problem, is stable with respect to disorder and thus a robust feature of the system.
Fluid states of matter can locally exhibit characteristics of the onset of crystalline order. Traditionally this has been theoretically investigated using multipoint correlation functions. However new measurement techniques now allow multiparticle co
nfigurations of cold atomic systems to be observed directly. This has led to a search for new techniques to characterize the configurations that are likely to be observed. One of these techniques is the configuration density (CD), which has been used to argue for the formation of Pauli crystals by non-interacting electrons in e.g. a harmonic trap. We show here that such Pauli crystals do not exist, but that other other interesting spatial structures can occur in the form of an anti-Crystal, where the fermions preferentially avoid a lattice of positions surrounding any given fermion. Further, we show that configuration densities must be treated with great care as naive application can lead to the identification of crystalline structures which are artifacts of the method and of no physical significance. We analyze the failure of the CD and suggest methods that might be more suitable for characterizing multiparticle correlations which may signal the onset of crystalline order. In particular, we introduce neighbour counting statistics (NCS), which is the full counting statistics of the particle number in a neighborhood of a given particle. We test this on two dimensional systems with emerging triangular and square crystal structures.
In this work we show that the composite fermion construction for the torus geometry is modular covariant. We show that this is the case both before and after projection, and that modular covariance properties are preserved under both exact projection
and under JK projection which was recently introduced by Pu, Wu, and Jain (PRB 96, 195302 (2017)). It is crucial for the modular properties to hold that the CF state is a proper state, i.e. that there are no holes in the occupied $Lambda$-levels.
We report on our systematic attempts at finding local interactions for which the lowest-Landau-level projected composite-fermion wave functions are the unique zero energy ground states. For this purpose, we study in detail the simplest non-trivial sy
stem beyond the Laughlin states, namely bosons at filling $ u=frac{2}{3}$ and identify local constraints among clusters of particles in the ground state. By explicit calculation, we show that no Hamiltonian up to (and including) four particle interactions produces this state as the exact ground state, and speculate that this remains true even when interaction terms involving greater number of particles are included. Surprisingly, we can identify an interaction, which imposes an energetic penalty for a specific entangled configuration of four particles with relative angular momentum of $6hbar$, that produces a unique zero energy solution (as we have confirmed for up to 12 particles). This state, referred to as the $lambda$-state, is not identical to the projected composite-fermion state, but the following facts suggest that the two might be topologically equivalent: the two sates have a high overlap; they have the same root partition; the quantum numbers for their neutral excitations are identical; and the quantum numbers for the quasiparticle excitations also match. On the quasihole side, we find that even though the quantum numbers of the lowest energy states agree with the prediction from the composite-fermion theory, these states are not separated from the others by a clearly identifiable gap. This prevents us from making a conclusive claim regarding the topological equivalence of the $lambda$ state and the composite-fermion state. Our study illustrates how new candidate states can be identified from constraining selected many particle configurations and it would be interesting to pursue their topological classification.
We construct explicit lowest-Landau-level wave functions for the composite-fermion Fermi sea and its low energy excitations following a recently developed approach [Pu, Wu and Jain, Phys. Rev. B 96, 195302 (2018)] and demonstrate them to be very accu
rate representations of the Coulomb eigenstates. We further ask how the Berry phase associated with a closed loop around the Fermi circle, predicted to be $pi$ in a Dirac composite fermion theory satisfying particle-hole symmetry [D. T. Son, Phys. Rev. X 5, 031027 (2015)], is affected by Landau level mixing. For this purpose, we consider a simple model wherein we determine the variational ground state as a function of Landau level mixing within the space spanned by two basis functions: the lowest-Landau-level projected and the unprojected composite-fermion Fermi sea wave functions. We evaluate Berry phase for a path around the Fermi circle within this model following a recent prescription, and find that it rotates rapidly as a function of Landau level mixing. We also consider the effect of a particle-hole symmetry breaking three-body interaction on the Berry phase while confining the Hilbert space to the lowest Landau level. Our study deepens the connection between the $pi$ Berry phase and the exact particle-hole symmetry in the lowest Landau level.
We develop a method to efficiently calculate trial wave functions for quantum Hall systems which involve projection onto the lowest Landau level. The method essentially replaces lowest Landau level projection by projection onto the $M$ lowest eigenst
ates of a suitably chosen hamiltonian acting within the lowest Landau level. The resulting energy projection is a controlled approximation to the exact lowest Landau level projection which improves with increasing $M$. It allows us to study projected trial wave functions for system sizes close to the maximal sizes that can be reached by exact diagonalization and can be straightforwardly applied in any geometry. As a first application and test case, we study a class of trial wave functions first proposed by Girvin and Jach, which are modifications of the Laughlin states involving a single real parameter. While these modified Laughlin states probably represent the same universality class exemplified by the Laughlin wave functions, we show by extensive numerical work for systems on the sphere and torus that they provide a significant improvement of the variational energy, overlap with the exact wave function and properties of the entanglement spectrum.
We investigate the nature of the plasma analogy for the Laughlin wave function on a torus describing the quantum Hall plateau at $ u=frac{1}{q}$. We first establish, as expected, that the plasma is screening if there are no short nontrivial paths aro
und the torus. We also find that when one of the handles has a short circumference -- i.e. the thin-torus limit -- the plasma no longer screens. To quantify this we compute the normalization of the Laughlin state, both numerically and analytically. For the numerical calculation we expand the Laughlin state in a Fock basis of slater-determinants of single particle orbitals, and determine the Fock coefficients of the expansion as a function of torus geometry. In the thin torus limit only a few Fock configurations have non-zero coefficients, and their analytical forms simplify greatly. Using this simple limit, we can reconstruct the normalization and analytically extend it back into the 2D regime. We find that there are geometry dependent corrections to the normalization, and this in turn implies that the plasma in the plasma analogy is not screening when in the thin torus limit. Further we obtain an approximate normalization factor that gives a good description of the normalization for all tori, by extrapolating the thin torus normalization to the thick torus limit.
