Resonating plaquette phases in large spin cold atom systems

Large spin cold atom systems can exhibit novel magnetic properties which do not appear in usual spin-1/2 systems. We investigate the SU(4) resonating plaquette state in the three dimensional cubic optical lattice with spin-3/2 cold fermions. A novel gauge field formalism is constructed to describe the Rokhsar-Kivelson type of Hamiltonian and a duality transformation is used to study the phase diagram. Due to the proliferation of topological defects, the system is generally gapped for the whole phase diagram of the quantum model, which agrees with the recent numerical studies. A critical line is found for the classical plaquette system, which also corresponds to a quantum many-body wavefunction in a "plaquette liquid phase".Comment: 6 pages, 3 figure

Sign problem free quantum Monte-Carlo study on thermodynamic properties and magnetic phase transitions in orbital-active itinerant ferromagnets

The microscopic mechanism of itinerant ferromagnetism is a long-standing problem due to the lack of non-perturbative methods to handle strong magnetic fluctuations of itinerant electrons. We have non-pertubatively studied thermodynamic properties and magnetic phase transitions of a two-dimensional multi-orbital Hubbard model exhibiting ferromagnetic ground states. Quantum Monte-Carlo simulations are employed, which are proved in a wide density region free of the sign problem usually suffered by simulations for fermions. Both Hund's coupling and electron itinerancy are essential for establishing the ferromagnetic coherence. No local magnetic moments exist in the system as a priori, nevertheless, the spin channel remains incoherent showing the Curie-Weiss type spin magnetic susceptibility down to very low temperatures at which the charge channel is already coherent exhibiting a weakly temperature-dependent compressibility. For the SU(2) invariant systems, the spin susceptibility further grows exponentially as approaching zero temperature in two dimensions. In the paramagnetic phase close to the Curie temperature, the momentum space Fermi distributions exhibit strong resemblance to those in the fully polarized state. The long-range ferromagnetic ordering appears when the symmetry is reduced to the Ising class, and the Curie temperature is accurately determined. These simulations provide helpful guidance to searching for novel ferromagnetic materials in both strongly correlated $d$-orbital transition metal oxide layers and the $p$-orbital ultra-cold atom optical lattice systems.Comment: 17 pages, 17 figure

Spontaneous surface magnetization and chiral Majorana modes

Majorana fermions are often proposed to be realized by first singling out a single non-degenerate Fermi surface in spin-orbit coupled systems, and then imposing boundaries or defects. In this work, we take a different route starting with two degenerate Fermi surfaces without spin-orbit coupling, and show that by the method of "kink on boundary", the dispersive chiral Majorana fermions can be realized in superconducting systems with $p\pm is$ pairings. The surfaces of these systems develop spontaneous magnetizations whose directions are determined by the boundary orientations and the phase difference between the $p$ and $s$-component gap functions. Along the magnetic domain walls on the surface, there exist chiral Majorana fermions propagating unidirectionally, which can be conveniently dragged and controlled by external magnetic fields. Furthermore, the surface magnetization is shown to be a magnetoelectric effect based on a Ginzburg-Landau free energy analysis. We also discuss how to use the proximity effects to realize chiral Majorana fermions by performing the "kink on boundary" method

Detecting edge degeneracy in interacting topological insulators through entanglement entropy

The existence of degenerate or gapless edge states is a characteristic feature of topological insulators, but is difficult to detect in the presence of interactons. We propose a new method to obtain the degeneracy of the edge states from the perspective of entanglement entropy, which is very useful to identify interacting topological states. Employing the determinant quantum Monte Carlo technique, we investigate the interaction effect on two representative models of fermionic topological insulators in one and two dimensions, respectively. In the two topologically nontrivial phases, the edge degeneracies are reduced by interactions but remain to be nontrivial.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figure

One-dimensional Quantum Spin Dynamics of Bethe String States

Quantum dynamics of strongly correlated systems is a challenging problem. Although the low energy fractional excitations of one dimensional integrable models are often well-understood, exploring quantum dynamics in these systems remains challenging in the gapless regime, especially at intermediate and high energies. Based on the algebraic Bethe ansatz formalism, we study spin dynamics in a representative one dimensional strongly correlated model, {\it i.e. }, the antiferromagnetic spin-$\frac{1}{2}$ XXZ chain with the Ising anisotropy, via the form-factor formulae. Various excitations at different energy scales are identified crucial to the dynamic spin structure factors under the guidance of sum rules. At small magnetic polarizations, gapless excitations dominate the low energy spin dynamics arising from the magnetic-field-induced incommensurability. In contrast, spin dynamics at intermediate and high energies is characterized by the two- and three-string states, which are multi-particle excitations based on the commensurate N\'eel ordered background. Our work is helpful for experimental studies on spin dynamics in both condensed matter and cold atom systems beyond the low energy effective Luttinger liquid theory. Based on an intuitive physical picture, we speculate that the dynamic feature at high energies due to the multi-particle anti-bound state excitations can be generalized to non-integrable spin systems.Comment: 15 pages, to appear in Phys. Rev.

Mott insulating states of the anisotropic SU(4) Dirac fermions

We investigate the Mott insulating states of the SU(4) Hubbard model on the square lattice with a staggered pattern of flux by employing the large-scale sign-problem free quantum Monte-Carlo simulations. As varying the flux $\phi$, the low energy fermions evolve from a nested Fermi surface at zero flux to isotropic Dirac cones at $\pi$-flux, and exhibit anisotropic Dirac cones in between. The simulations show the competitions among the Dirac semi-metal, the antiferromagnetic and valence-bond-solid phases. The phase diagram features a tri-critical point where these three phases meet. In the strong coupling limit, only the antiferromagnetic phase appears. The quantum phase transition between the antiferromagnetic phase and the valence-bond-solid phase is found to be continuous, and the critical exponents are numerically determined. We have also found that inside the valence-bond-solid phase, there exists a region that the single-particle gap vanishes but the spin gap remains finite, which is consistent with a plaquette valence-bonding ordering pattern.Comment: 6 pages, 7 figure