Brightened spin-triplet interlayer excitons and optical selection rules in van der Waals heterobilayers

We investigate the optical properties of spin-triplet interlayer excitons in heterobilayer transition metal dichalcogenides in comparison with the spin-singlet ones. Surprisingly, the optical transition dipole of the spin-triplet exciton is found to be in the same order of magnitude to that of the spin-singlet exciton, in sharp contrast to the monolayer excitons where the spin triplet species is considered as dark compared to the singlet. Unlike the monolayer excitons whose spin-conserved (spin-flip) transition dipole can only couple to light of in-plane (out-of-plane) polarization, such restriction is removed for the interlayer excitons due to the breaking of the out-of-plane mirror symmetry. We find that as the interlayer atomic registry changes, the optical transition dipole of interlayer exciton crosses between in-plane ones of opposite circular polarization and the out-of-plane one for both the spin-triplet and spin-singlet species. As a result, excitons of both species have non-negligible coupling into photon modes of both in-plane and out-of-plane propagations, another sharp difference from the monolayers where the exciton couples predominantly into the out-of-plane propagation channel. At given atomic registry, the spin-triplet and spin-singlet excitons have distinct valley polarization selection rules, allowing the selective optical addressing of both the valley configuration and the spin singlet/triplet configuration of interlayer excitons

Kinematic Evolution of a Slow CME in Corona Viewed by STEREO-B on 8 October 2007

We studied the kinematic evolution of the 8 October 2007 CME in the corona based on Sun-Earth Connection Coronal and Heliospheric Investigation (SECCHI) onboard satellite B of Solar TErrestrial RElations Observatory (STEREO). The observational results show that this CME obviously deflected to a lower latitude region for about 30$^\circ$ at the beginning. After this, the CME propagated radially. We also analyze the influence of the background magnetic field on the deflection of this CME. We find that the deflection of this CME at an early stage may be caused by the nonuniform distribution of the background magnetic field energy density and that the CME tended to propagate to the region with lower magnetic energy density. In addition, we found that the velocity profile of this gradual CME shows multiphased evolution during its propagation in COR1-B FOV. The CME velocity first kept at a constant of 23.1km.s-1. Then, it accelerated continuously with a positive acceleration of 7.6m.s-2.Comment: 10 pages, 7 figure

An efficient method for hybrid density functional calculation with spin-orbit coupling

In first-principles calculations, hybrid functional is often used to improve accuracy from local exchange correlation functionals. A drawback is that evaluating the hybrid functional needs significantly more computing effort. When spin-orbit coupling (SOC) is taken into account, the non-collinear spin structure increases computing effort by at least eight times. As a result, hybrid functional calculations with SOC are intractable in most cases. In this paper, we present an approximate solution to this problem by developing an efficient method based on a mixed linear combination of atomic orbital (LCAO) scheme. We demonstrate the power of this method using several examples and we show that the results compare very well with those of direct hybrid functional calculations with SOC, yet the method only requires a computing effort similar to that without SOC. The presented technique provides a good balance between computing efficiency and accuracy, and it can be extended to magnetic materials.Comment: 10 pages, 3 figure

Intervalley coupling by quantum dot confinement potentials in monolayer transition metal dichalcogenides

Monolayer transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) offer new opportunities for realizing quantum dots (QDs) in the ultimate two-dimensional (2D) limit. Given the rich control possibilities of electron valley pseudospin discovered in the monolayers, this quantum degree of freedom can be a promising carrier of information for potential quantum spintronics exploiting single electrons in TMD QDs. An outstanding issue is to identify the degree of valley hybridization, due to the QD confinement, which may significantly change the valley physics in QDs from its form in the 2D bulk. Here we perform a systematic study of the intervalley coupling by QD confinement potentials on extended TMD monolayers. We find that the intervalley coupling in such geometry is generically weak due to the vanishing amplitude of the electron wavefunction at the QD boundary, and hence valley hybridization shall be well quenched by the much stronger spin-valley coupling in monolayer TMDs and the QDs can well inherit the valley physics of the 2D bulk. We also discover sensitive dependence of intervalley coupling strength on the central position and the lateral length scales of the confinement potentials, which may possibly allow tuning of intervalley coupling by external controlsComment: 17 pages, 14 figure

Statistical Study of Coronal Mass Ejection Source Locations: Understanding CMEs Viewed in Coronagraphs

How to properly understand coronal mass ejections (CMEs) viewed in white-light coronagraphs is crucial to many relative researches in solar and space physics. The issue is now particularly addressed in this paper through studying the source locations of all the 1078 LASCO CMEs listed in CDAW CME catalog during 1997 -- 1998 and their correlation with CMEs' apparent parameters. By manually checking LASCO and EIT movies of these CMEs, we find that, except 231 CMEs whose source locations can not be identified due to poor data, there are 288 CMEs with location identified on the front-side solar disk, 234 CMEs appearing above solar limb, and 325 CMEs without evident eruptive signatures in the field of view of EIT. Based on the statistical results of CMEs' source locations, four physical issues, including (1) the missing rate of CMEs by SOHO LASCO and EIT, (2) the mass of CMEs, (3) the causes of halo CMEs and (4) the deflections of CMEs in the corona, are exhaustively analyzed. It is found that (1) about 32% of front-side CMEs can not be recognized by SOHO, (2) the brightness of a CME at any heliocentric distance is roughly positively correlated with its speed, and the CME mass derived from the brightness is probably overestimated, (3) both projection effect and violent eruption are the major causes of halo CMEs, and especially for limb halo CMEs, the latter is the primary one, (4) most CMEs deflected towards equator near the solar minimum, and these deflections can be classified into three types, the asymmetrical expansion, non-radial ejection, and the deflected propagation.Comment: 15 pages, 14 figure

Lower bound of local quantum uncertainty for high-dimensional bipartite quantum systems

Quantum correlations are of fundamental importance in quantum phenomena and quantum information processing studies. The measure of quantum correlations is one central issue. The recently proposed measure of quantum correlations, the local quantum uncertainty (LQU), satisfies the full physical requirements of a measure of quantum correlations. In this work, by using operator relaxation, a closed form lower bound of the LQU for arbitrary-dimensional bipartite quantum states is derived. We have compared the lower bound and the optimized LQU for several typical quantum states.Comment: We have revised the manuscript. Comments are welcom

Moir\'e excitons: from programmable quantum emitter arrays to spin-orbit coupled artificial lattices

Highly uniform and ordered nanodot arrays are crucial for high performance quantum optoelectronics including new semiconductor lasers and single photon emitters, and for synthesizing artificial lattices of interacting quasiparticles towards quantum information processing and simulation of many-body physics. Van der Waals heterostructures of 2D semiconductors are naturally endowed with an ordered nanoscale landscape, i.e. the moir\'e pattern that laterally modulates electronic and topographic structures. Here we find these moir\'e effects realize superstructures of nanodot confinements for long-lived interlayer excitons, which can be either electrically or strain tuned from perfect arrays of quantum emitters to excitonic superlattices with giant spin-orbit coupling (SOC). Besides the wide range tuning of emission wavelength, the electric field can also invert the spin optical selection rule of the emitter arrays. This unprecedented control arises from the gauge structure imprinted on exciton wavefunctions by the moir\'e, which underlies the SOC when hopping couples nanodots into superlattices. We show that the moir\'e hosts complex-hopping honeycomb superlattices, where exciton bands feature a Dirac node and two Weyl nodes, connected by spin-momentum locked topological edge modes.Comment: To appear in Science Advance

Spin-valley qubit in nanostructures of monolayer semiconductors: Optical control and hyperfine interaction

We investigate the optical control possibilities of spin-valley qubit carried by single electrons localized in nanostructures of monolayer TMDs, including small quantum dots formed by lateral heterojunction and charged impurities. The quantum controls are discussed when the confinement induces valley hybridization and when the valley hybridization is absent. We show that the bulk valley and spin optical selection rules can be inherited in different forms in the two scenarios, both of which allow the definition of spin-valley qubit with desired optical controllability. We also investigate nuclear spin induced decoherence and quantum control of electron-nuclear spin entanglement via intervalley terms of the hyperfine interaction. Optically controlled two-qubit operations in a single quantum dot are discussed.Comment: 17pages, 10 figure

Quantitative Analysis of CME Deflections in the Corona

In this paper, ten CME events viewed by the STEREO twin spacecraft are analyzed to study the deflections of CMEs during their propagation in the corona. Based on the three-dimensional information of the CMEs derived by the graduated cylindrical shell (GCS) model [Thernisien et al., 2006], it is found that the propagation directions of eight CMEs had changed. By applying the theoretical method proposed by Shen et al. [2011] to all the CMEs, we found that the deflections are consistent, in strength and direction, with the gradient of the magnetic energy density. There is a positive correlation between the deflection rate and the strength of the magnetic energy density gradient and a weak anti-correlation between the deflection rate and the CME speed. Our results suggest that the deflections of CMEs are mainly controlled by the background magnetic field and can be quantitatively described by the magnetic energy density gradient (MEDG) model.Comment: 19 pages, 20 figure

Triply degenerate nodal line and tunable contracted-drumhead surface state in a tight-binding model

The study of topological semimetals has been extended to more general topological nodal systems such as metamaterials and artificial periodic structures. Among various nodal structures, triply degenerate nodal line (TNL) is rare and hence lack of attention. In this work, we have proposed a simple tight-binding model which hosts a topological non-trivial TNL. This TNL not only has the drumhead surface states as usual nodal line systems, but also has surface states which form a contracted-drumhead shape. And the shape and area of this contracted-drumhead can be tuned by the hopping parameters of the model. This provides an effective way to modulate surface states as well as their density of states, which can be important in future applications of topological nodal systems.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figure