Fractional periodicity of persistent current in coupled quantum rings

We study the transmission properties of a few-site Hubbard rings with up to second-nearest neighbor coupling embedded to a ring-shaped lead using exact diagonalization. The approach captures all the correlation effects and enables us to include interactions both in the ring and in the ring-shaped lead, and study on an equal footing weak and strong coupling between the ring and the lead as well as asymmetry. In the weakly coupled case, we find fractional periodicity at all electron fillings at sufficiently high Hubbard U, similar to isolated rings. For strongly coupled rings, on the contrary, fractional periodicity is only observed at sufficiently large negative gate voltages and high interaction strengths. This is explained by the formation of a bound correlated state in the ring that is effectively weakly coupled to the lead

Signatures of topological phase transitions in mesoscopic superconducting rings

We investigate Josephson currents in mesoscopic rings with a weak link which are in or near a topological superconducting phase. As a paradigmatic example, we consider the Kitaev model of a spinless p-wave superconductor in one dimension, emphasizing how this model emerges from more realistic settings based on semiconductor nanowires. We show that the flux periodicity of the Josephson current provides signatures of the topological phase transition and the emergence of Majorana fermions situated on both sides of the weak link even when fermion parity is not a good quantum number. In large rings, the Majorana fermions hybridize only across the weak link. In this case, the Josephson current is h/e periodic in the flux threading the loop when fermion parity is a good quantum number but reverts to the more conventional h/2e periodicity in the presence of fermion-parity changing relaxation processes. In mesoscopic rings, the Majorana fermions also hybridize through their overlap in the interior of the superconducting ring. We find that in the topological superconducting phase, this gives rise to an h/e-periodic contribution even when fermion parity is not conserved and that this contribution exhibits a peak near the topological phase transition. This signature of the topological phase transition is robust to the effects of disorder. As a byproduct, we find that close to the topological phase transition, disorder drives the system deeper into the topological phase. This is in stark contrast to the known behavior far from the phase transition, where disorder tends to suppress the topological phase.Comment: 14 pages, 9 figures, minor changes in the text, published versio

Temperature enhanced persistent currents and "ϕ0/2\phi_0/2 periodicity"

We predict a non-monotonous temperature dependence of the persistent currents in a ballistic ring coupled strongly to a stub in the grand canonical as well as in the canonical case. We also show that such a non-monotonous temperature dependence can naturally lead to a $\phi_0/2$ periodicity of the persistent currents, where $\phi_0$=h/e. There is a crossover temperature $T^*$, below which persistent currents increase in amplitude with temperature while they decrease above this temperature. This is in contrast to persistent currents in rings being monotonously affected by temperature. $T^*$ is parameter-dependent but of the order of $\Delta_u/\pi^2k_B$, where $\Delta_u$ is the level spacing of the isolated ring. For the grand-canonical case $T^*$ is half of that for the canonical case.Comment: some typos correcte

Topological Hochschild homology and the Hasse-Weil zeta function

We consider the Tate cohomology of the circle group acting on the topological Hochschild homology of schemes. We show that in the case of a scheme smooth and proper over a finite field, this cohomology theory naturally gives rise to the cohomological interpretation of the Hasse-Weil zeta function by regularized determinants envisioned by Deninger. In this case, the periodicity of the zeta function is reflected by the periodicity of said cohomology theory, whereas neither is periodic in general

Crossover from hc/e to hc/2e current oscillations in rings of s-wave superconductors

We analyze the crossover from an hc/e-periodicity of the persistent current in flux threaded clean metallic rings towards an hc/2e-flux periodicity of the supercurrent upon entering the superconducting state. On the basis of a model calculation for a one-dimensional ring we identify the underlying mechanism, which balances the hc/e versus the hc/2e periodic components of the current density. When the ring circumference exceeds the coherence length of the superconductor, the flux dependence is strictly hc/2e periodic. Further, we develop a multi-channel model which reduces the Bogoliubov - de Gennes equations to a one-dimensional differential equation for the radial component of the wave function. The discretization of this differential equation introduces transverse channels, whose number scales with the thickness of the ring. The periodicity crossover is analyzed close the critical temperature