A partial fraction decomposition of the Fermi function

A partial fraction decomposition of the Fermi function resulting in a finite sum over simple poles is proposed. This allows for efficient calculations involving the Fermi function in various contexts of electronic structure or electron transport theories. The proposed decomposition converges in a well-defined region faster than exponential and is thus superior to the standard Matsubara expansion.Comment: 7 pages, 5 figure

Full Counting Statistics of a Non-adiabatic Electron Pump

Non-adiabatic charge pumping through a single-level quantum dot with periodically modulated parameters is studied theoretically. By means of a quantum-master-equation approach the full counting statistics of the system is obtained. We find a trinomial-probability distribution of the charge transfer, which adequately describes the reversal of the pumping current by sweeping the driving frequency. Further, we derive equations of motion for current and noise, and solve those numerically for two different driving schemes. Both show interesting features which can be fully analyzed due to the simple and generic model studied.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figure

Strain-tuning of vacancy-induced magnetism in graphene nanoribbons

Vacancies in graphene lead to the appearance of localized electronic states with non-vanishing spin moments. Using a mean-field Hubbard model and an effective double-quantum dot description we investigate the influence of strain on localization and magnetic properties of the vacancy-induced states in semiconducting armchair nanoribbons. We find that the exchange splitting of a single vacancy and the singlet-triplet splitting for two vacancies can be widely tuned by applying uniaxial strain, which is crucial for spintronic applications

Emergence of Bloch oscillations in one-dimensional systems

Electrons in periodic potentials exhibit oscillatory motion in presence of an electric field. Such oscillations are known as Bloch oscillations. In this article we theoretically investigate the emergence of Bloch oscillations for systems where the electric field is confined to a finite region, like in typical electronic devices. We use a one-dimensional tight-binding model within the single-band approximation to numerically study the dynamics of electrons after a sudden switching-on of the electric field. We find a transition from a regime with direct current to Bloch oscillations when increasing the system size or decreasing the field strength. We propose a pump-probe scheme to observe the oscillations by measuring the accumulated charge as a function of the pulse-length

Pseudomodes and the corresponding transformation of the temperature-dependent bath correlation function

In open system approaches with non-Markovian environments, the process of inserting an individual mode (denoted as "pseudomode") into the bath or extracting it from the bath is widely employed. This procedure, however, is typically performed on basis of the spectral density (SD) and does not incorporate temperature. Here, we show how the - temperature-dependent - bath correlation function (BCF) transforms in such a process. We present analytic formulae for the transformed BCF and numerically study the differences between factorizing initial state and global thermal (correlated) initial state of mode and bath, respectively. We find that in the regime of strong coupling of the mode to both system and bath, the differences in the BCFs give rise to pronounced differences in the dynamics of the system.Comment: 12 pages, 4 figure

Nonlinear phononics using atomically thin membranes

Phononic crystals and acoustic meta-materials are used to tailor phonon and sound propagation properties by facilitating artificial, periodic structures. Analogous to photonic crystals, phononic band gaps can be created, which influence wave propagation and, more generally, allow engineering of the acoustic properties of a system. Beyond that, nonlinear phenomena in periodic structures have been extensively studied in photonic crystals and atomic Bose-Einstein Condensates in optical lattices. However, creating nonlinear phononic crystals or nonlinear acoustic meta-materials remains challenging and only few examples have been demonstrated. Here we show that atomically thin and periodically pinned membranes support coupled localized modes with nonlinear dynamics. The proposed system provides a platform for investigating nonlinear phononics

Multi-phonon relaxation and generation of quantum states in a nonlinear mechanical oscillator

The dissipative quantum dynamics of an anharmonic oscillator is investigated theoretically in the context of carbon-based nano-mechanical systems. In the short-time limit, it is known that macroscopic superposition states appear for such oscillators. In the long-time limit, single and multi-phonon dissipation lead to decoherence of the non-classical states. However, at zero temperature, as a result of two-phonon losses the quantum oscillator eventually evolves into a non-classical steady state. The relaxation of this state due to thermal excitations and one-phonon losses is numerically and analytically studied. The possibility of verifying the occurrence of the non-classical state is investigated and signatures of the quantum features arising in a ring-down setup are presented. The feasibility of the verification scheme is discussed in the context of quantum nano-mechanical systems.Comment: 23 pages, 8 figures; Minor revisions; Accepted for publication in NJ

Multi-scale approach for strain-engineering of phosphorene

A multi-scale approach for the theoretical description of deformed phosphorene is presented. This approach combines a valence-force model to relate macroscopic strain to microscopic displacements of atoms and a tight-binding model with distance-dependent hopping parameters to obtain electronic properties. The resulting self-consistent electromechanical model is suitable for large-scale modeling of phosphorene devices. We demonstrate this for the case of an inhomogeneously deformed phosphorene drum, which may be used as an exciton funnel