Berry phase jumps and giant nonreciprocity in Dirac quantum dots

We predict that a strong nonreciprocity in the resonance spectra of Dirac quantum dots can be induced by the Berry phase. The nonreciprocity arises in relatively weak magnetic fields and is manifest in anomalously large field-induced splittings of quantum dot resonances which are degenerate at $B=0$ due to time-reversal symmetry. This exotic behavior, which is governed by field-induced jumps in the Berry phase of confined electronic states, is unique to quantum dots in Dirac materials and is absent in conventional quantum dots. The effect is strong for gapless Dirac particles and can overwhelm the $B$-induced orbital and Zeeman splittings. A finite Dirac mass suppresses the effect. The nonreciprocity, predicted for generic two-dimensional Dirac materials, is accessible through Faraday and Kerr optical rotation measurements and scanning tunneling spectroscopy.Comment: 6 pages, 6 figure

Resonant Tunneling and Intrinsic Bistability in Twisted Graphene Structures

We predict that vertical transport in heterostructures formed by twisted graphene layers can exhibit a unique bistability mechanism. Intrinsically bistable $I$-$V$ characteristics arise from resonant tunneling and interlayer charge coupling, enabling multiple stable states in the sequential tunneling regime. We consider a simple trilayer architecture, with the outer layers acting as the source and drain and the middle layer floating. Under bias, the middle layer can be either resonant or non-resonant with the source and drain layers. The bistability is controlled by geometric device parameters easily tunable in experiments. The nanoscale architecture can enable uniquely fast switching times.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figure

Effects of isotope doping on the phonon modes in graphene

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Materials Science and Engineering, 2012.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (p. 41-46).Carbon related systems have attracted a large amount of attention of the science and technology community during the last few decades. In particular, graphene and carbon nanotubes have remarkable properties that have inspired applications in several fields of science and engineering. Despite these properties, creating structurally perfect samples is a difficult objective to achieve. Defects are usually seen as imperfections that degrade the properties of materials. However, defects can also be exploited to create novel materials and devices. The main topic of this thesis is studying the effect of isotope doping on the phonon properties of graphene. The advantage of the isotope enrichment technique is that only phonon frequencies or thermal properties can be modified without changing the electrical or chemical properties. We calculated the values of the phonon lifetimes due to isotope impurity scattering for all values of isotopic fractions, isotopic masses and for all wave-vectors using second order perturbation theory. We found that for natural concentrations of 13C, the contribution of isotopic scattering of optical modes is negligible when compared to the contribution from the electron-phonon interaction. Nevertheless, for atomic concentrations of 13C as high as [rho] = 0.5 both the isotopic and electron-phonon contributions become comparable. Our results are compared with recent experimental results and we find good agreement both in the 13C atomic density dependence of the lifetime as well as in the calculated spectral width of the G-band. Due to phonon scattering by 13C isotopes, some graphene phonon wave-functions become localized in real space. Numerical calculations show that phonon localized states exist in the high-energy optical phonon modes and in regions of flat phonon dispersion. In particular, for the case of in-plane optical phonon modes, a typical localization length is on the order of 3 nm for 13C atomic concentrations of [rho] ~~ 0.5. Optical excitation of phonon modes may provide a way to experimentally observe localization effects for phonons in graphene.by Joaquin F. Rodriguez-Nieva.S.M

Enhanced thermionic-dominated photoresponse in graphene Schottky junctions

Vertical heterostructures of van der Waals materials enable new pathways to tune charge and energy transport characteristics in nanoscale systems. We propose that graphene Schottky junctions can host a special kind of photoresponse which is characterized by strongly coupled heat and charge flows that run vertically out of the graphene plane. This regime can be accessed when vertical energy transport mediated by thermionic emission of hot carriers overwhelms electron-lattice cooling as well as lateral diffusive energy transport. As such, the power pumped into the system is efficiently extracted across the entire graphene active area via thermionic emission of hot carriers into a semiconductor material. Experimental signatures of this regime include a large and tunable internal responsivity ${\cal R}$ with a non-monotonic temperature dependence. In particular, ${\cal R}$ peaks at electronic temperatures on the order of the Schottky potential $\phi$ and has a large upper limit ${\cal R} \le e/\phi$ ($e/\phi=10\,{\rm A/W}$ when $\phi = 100\,{\rm meV}$). Our proposal opens up new approaches for engineering the photoresponse in optically-active graphene heterostructures.Comment: 6 pages, 2 figure

Goldstone bosons and fluctuating hydrodynamics with dipole and momentum conservation

We develop a Schwinger-Keldysh effective field theory describing the hydrodynamics of a fluid with conserved charge and dipole moments, together with conserved momentum. The resulting hydrodynamic modes are highly unusual, including sound waves with quadratic (magnon-like) dispersion relation and subdiffusive decay rate. Hydrodynamics itself is unstable below four spatial dimensions. We show that the momentum density is, at leading order, the Goldstone boson for a dipole symmetry which appears spontaneously broken at finite charge density. Unlike an ordinary fluid, the presence or absence of energy conservation qualitatively changes the decay rates of the hydrodynamic modes. This effective field theory naturally couples to curved spacetime and background gauge fields; in the flat spacetime limit, we reproduce the "mixed rank tensor fields" previously coupled to fracton matter.Comment: 20+10 pages. v2, v3: minor edit