225 research outputs found
String Picture of Bose-Einstein Condensation
A nonrelativistic Bose gas is represented as a grand-canonical ensemble of
fluctuating closed spacetime strings of arbitrary shape and length. The loops
are characterized by their string tension and the number of times they wind
around the imaginary time axis. At the temperature where Bose-Einstein
condensation sets in, the string tension, being determined by the chemical
potential, vanishes, the system becomes critical, and the strings proliferate.
A comparison with Feynman's description in terms of rings of cyclicly permuted
bosons shows that the winding number of a loop corresponds to the number of
particles contained in a ring.Comment: 13 pages, 6 figures; references adde
Self-Duality in Superconductor-Insulator Quantum Phase Transitions
It is argued that close to a Coulomb interacting quantum critical point, the
interaction between two vortices in a disordered superconducting thin film
separated by a distance changes from logarithmic in the mean-field region
to in the region dominated by quantum critical fluctuations. This gives
support to the charge-vortex duality picture of the observed reflection
symmetry in the current-voltage characteristics on both sides of the
transition.Comment: 4 pages, no figures, 2nd version: title (slightly) changed and text
accordingl
Induced quantum numbers in the (2+1)-dimensional electron gas
A gas of electrons confined to a plane is examined in both the relativistic
and nonrelativistic case. Using a (0+1)-dimensional effective theory, a
remarkably simple method is proposed to calculate the spin density induced by
an uniform magnetic background field. The physical properties of possible
fluxon excitations are determined. It is found that while in the relativistic
case they can be considered as half-fermions (semions) in that they carry half
a fermion charge and half the spin of a fermion, in the nonrelativistic case
they should be thought of as fermions, having the charge and spin of a fermion.Comment: 19 pages, REVTE
Instabilities of the AA-stacked graphene bilayer
Tight-binding calculations predict that the AA-stacked graphene bilayer has
one electron and one hole conducting bands, and that the Fermi surfaces of
these bands coincide. We demonstrate that as a result of this degeneracy, the
bilayer becomes unstable with respect to a set of spontaneous symmetry
violations. Which of the symmetries is broken depends on the microscopic
details of the system. We find that antiferromagnetism is the more stable order
parameter. This order is stabilized by the strong on-site Coulomb repulsion.
For an on-site repulsion energy typical for graphene systems, the
antiferromagnetic gap can exist up to room temperatures.Comment: 4 pages, 2 eps figure, submitted to Phys. Rev. Let
Gauge-invariant critical exponents for the Ginzburg-Landau model
The critical behavior of the Ginzburg-Landau model is described in a
manifestly gauge-invariant manner. The gauge-invariant correlation-function
exponent is computed to first order in the and -expansion, and found
to agree with the ordinary exponent obtained in the covariant gauge, with the
parameter in the gauge-fixing term .Comment: 4 pages, no figure
Electron Quasiparticles Drive the Superconductor-to-Insulator Transition in Homogeneously Disordered Thin Films
Transport data on Bi, MoGe, and PbBi/Ge homogeneously-disordered thin films
demonstrate that the critical resistivity, , at the nominal
insulator-superconductor transition is linearly proportional to the normal
sheet resistance, . In addition, the critical magnetic field scales
linearly with the superconducting energy gap and is well-approximated by
. Because is determined at high temperatures and is the
pair-breaking field, the two immediate consequences are: 1)
electron-quasiparticles populate the insulating side of the transition and 2)
standard phase-only models are incapable of describing the destruction of the
superconducting state. As gapless electronic excitations populate the
insulating state, the universality class is no longer the 3D XY model. The lack
of a unique critical resistance in homogeneously disordered films can be
understood in this context. In light of the recent experiments which observe an
intervening metallic state separating the insulator from the superconductor in
homogeneously disordered MoGe thin films, we argue that the two transitions
that accompany the destruction of superconductivity are 1) superconductor to
Bose metal in which phase coherence is lost and 2) Bose metal to localized
electron insulator via pair-breaking.Comment: This article is included in the Festschrift for Prof. Michael Pollak
on occasion of his 75th birthda
Superconductor-insulator transition driven by local dephasing
We consider a system where localized bound electron pairs form an array of
"Andreev"-like scattering centers and are coupled to a fermionic subsystem of
uncorrelated electrons. By means of a path-integral approach, which describes
the bound electron pairs within a coherent pseudospin representation, we derive
and analyze the effective action for the collective phase modes which arise
from the coupling between the two subsystems once the fermionic degrees of
freedom are integrated out. This effective action has features of a quantum
phase model in the presence of a Berry phase term and exhibits a coupling to a
field which describes at the same time the fluctuations of density of the bound
pairs and those of the amplitude of the fermion pairs. Due to the competition
between the local and the hopping induced non-local phase dynamics it is
possible, by tuning the exchange coupling or the density of the bound pairs, to
trigger a transition from a phase ordered superconducting to a phase disordered
insulating state. We discuss the different mechanisms which control this
occurrence and the eventual destruction of phase coherence both in the weak and
strong coupling limit.Comment: 16 pages, 5 figures, submitted to PRB (05-Feb04
Collective Excitations, Nambu-Goldstone Modes and Instability of Inhomogeneous Polariton Condensates
We study non-equilibrium microcavity-polariton condensates (MPCs) in a
harmonic potential trap theoretically. We calculate and analyze the steady
state, collective-excitation modes and instability of MPCs. Within excitation
modes, there exist Nambu-Goldstone modes that can reveal the pattern of the
spontaneous symmetry breaking of MPCs. Bifurcation of the stable and unstable
modes is identified in terms of the pumping power and spot size. The unstable
mechanism associated with the inward supercurrent flow is characterized by the
existence of a supersonic region within the condensate.Comment: 16 pages, 3 figure
Critical Exponents of the Superconducting Phase Transition
We study the critical exponents of the superconducting phase transition in
the context of renormalization group theory starting from a dual formulation of
the Ginzburg-Landau theory. The dual formulation describes a loop gas of
Abrikosov flux tubes which proliferate when the critical temperature is
approached from below. In contrast to the Ginzburg-Landau theory, it has a
spontaneously broken global symmetry and possesses an infrared stable fixed
point. The exponents coincide with those of a superfluid with reversed
temperature axis.Comment: Postscript file. For related work see www adress
http://www.physik.fu-berlin.de/kleiner_re.html in our homepage
http://www.physik.fu-berlin.de/kleinert.htm
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