Role of Orbitals in the Physics of Correlated Electron Systems

Rich properties of systems with strongly correlated electrons, such as transition metal oxides, is largely connected with an interplay of different degrees of freedom in them: charge, spin, orbital ones, as well as crystal lattice. Specific and often very important role is played by orbital degrees of freedom. In this comment I will shortly summarize the main concepts and discuss some of the well-known manifestations of orbital degrees of freedom, but will mostly concentrate on a recent development in this field.Comment: To be published in "Comments on Solid State Physics", part of "Physica Scripta

Coupling the valley degree of freedom to antiferromagnetic order

Conventional electronics are based invariably on the intrinsic degrees of freedom of an electron, namely, its charge and spin. The exploration of novel electronic degrees of freedom has important implications in both basic quantum physics and advanced information technology. Valley as a new electronic degree of freedom has received considerable attention in recent years. In this paper, we develop the theory of spin and valley physics of an antiferromagnetic honeycomb lattice. We show that by coupling the valley degree of freedom to antiferromagnetic order, there is an emergent electronic degree of freedom characterized by the product of spin and valley indices, which leads to spin-valley dependent optical selection rule and Berry curvature-induced topological quantum transport. These properties will enable optical polarization in the spin-valley space, and electrical detection/manipulation through the induced spin, valley and charge fluxes. The domain walls of an antiferromagnetic honeycomb lattice harbors valley-protected edge states that support spin-dependent transport. Finally, we employ first principles calculations to show that the proposed optoelectronic properties can be realized in antiferromagnetic manganese chalcogenophosphates (MnPX_3, X = S, Se) in monolayer form.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figure

Classification of atomic-scale multipoles under crystallographic point groups and application to linear response tensors

Four types of atomic-scale multipoles, electric, magnetic, magnetic toroidal, and electric toroidal multipoles, give a complete set to describe arbitrary degrees of freedom for coupled charge, spin, and orbital of electrons. We here present a systematic classification of these multipole degrees of freedom towards the application in condensed matter physics. Starting from the multipole description under the rotation group in real space, we generalize the concept of multipoles in momentum space with the spin degree of freedom. We show how multipoles affect the electronic band structures and linear responses, such as the magneto-electric effect, magneto-current (magneto-gyrotropic) effect, spin conductivity, Piezo-electric effect, and so on. Moreover, we exhibit a complete table to represent the active multipoles under 32 crystallographic point groups. Our comprehensive and systematic analyses will give a foundation to identify enigmatic electronic order parameters and a guide to evaluate peculiar cross-correlated phenomena in condensed matter physics from microscopic point of view.Comment: 37 pages, 4 figures, 32 table

Confinement, Vacuum Structure: from QCD to Quantum Gravity

A minimal Lorentz gauge gravity model with R^2-type Lagrangian is proposed. In the absence of torsion the model admits a topological phase with unfixed metric. The model possesses a minimal set of dynamical degrees of freedom for the torsion. Remarkably, the torsion has the same number of dynamical of-shell degrees of freedom as the metric tensor. We trace an analogy between the structure of the quantum chromodynamics and the structure of possible theory of quantum gravity.Comment: 7 pages; reduced version of talk given at IV International Symposium on Symmetries in Subatomic Physics (SSP 2009), plenary session in Honor of Yongmin Cho's 65th Birthday, Taipei, Taiwan, 2-5 June 2009; to appear in "Symmetries in Subatomic Physics", ed. P. Hwang

Consistent effective description of nucleonic resonances in an unitary relativistic field-theoretic way

High energy strong interaction physics is successfully described by the local renormalizable gauge theory called Quantum-Chromo-Dynamics (QCD) with quarks and gluons as ``elementary'' degrees of freedom, while intermediate energy strong interaction physics shows up to be determined by a non-local, non--renormalizable effective field theory (EFT) of ``effective'' degrees of freedom like mesons, ground state baryons and resonances. Within the picture of an effective field theory of strong interaction at intermediate energies I present a ``toy-model'' in which fermionic and bosonic resonances are considered to be ``particles'', i.e. they consistently are described by (anti-)commuting effective field-operators (containing dynamics of infinitely many quark-gluon or meson-nucleon diagrams) which are comfortably treated by Wick's Theorem in a covariant framework and obey unitarity. Non-trivial implications to couplings of non-local interactions are shown.Comment: 8 pages, 1 figure; invited talk given at XIV. Int. Sem. on High Energy Physics Probl., 17.-22.8.1998, Dubna (to be published in the proceedings

Quantum transport in carbon nanotubes

Carbon nanotubes are a versatile material in which many aspects of condensed matter physics come together. Recent discoveries, enabled by sophisticated fabrication, have uncovered new phenomena that completely change our understanding of transport in these devices, especially the role of the spin and valley degrees of freedom. This review describes the modern understanding of transport through nanotube devices. Unlike conventional semiconductors, electrons in nanotubes have two angular momentum quantum numbers, arising from spin and from valley freedom. We focus on the interplay between the two. In single quantum dots defined in short lengths of nanotube, the energy levels associated with each degree of freedom, and the spin-orbit coupling between them, are revealed by Coulomb blockade spectroscopy. In double quantum dots, the combination of quantum numbers modifies the selection rules of Pauli blockade. This can be exploited to read out spin and valley qubits, and to measure the decay of these states through coupling to nuclear spins and phonons. A second unique property of carbon nanotubes is that the combination of valley freedom and electron-electron interactions in one dimension strongly modifies their transport behaviour. Interaction between electrons inside and outside a quantum dot is manifested in SU(4) Kondo behavior and level renormalization. Interaction within a dot leads to Wigner molecules and more complex correlated states. This review takes an experimental perspective informed by recent advances in theory. As well as the well-understood overall picture, we also state clearly open questions for the field. These advances position nanotubes as a leading system for the study of spin and valley physics in one dimension where electronic disorder and hyperfine interaction can both be reduced to a very low level.Comment: In press at Reviews of Modern Physics. 68 pages, 55 figure