Topological Phases for Fermionic Cold Atoms on the Lieb Lattice

We investigate the properties of the Lieb lattice, i.e a face-centered square lattice, subjected to external gauge fields. We show that an Abelian gauge field leads to a peculiar quantum Hall effect, which is a consequence of the single Dirac cone and the flat band characterizing the energy spectrum. Then we explore the effects of an intrinsic spin-orbit term - a non-Abelian gauge field - and demonstrate the occurrence of the quantum spin Hall effect in this model. Besides, we obtain the relativistic Hamiltonian describing the Lieb lattice at low energy and derive the Landau levels in the presence of external Abelian and non-Abelian gauge fields. Finally, we describe concrete schemes for realizing these gauge fields with cold fermionic atoms trapped in an optical Lieb lattice. In particular, we provide a very efficient method to reproduce the intrinsic (Kane-Mele) spin-orbit term with assisted-tunneling schemes. Consequently, our model could be implemented in order to produce a variety of topological states with cold-atoms.Comment: 12 pages, 9 figure

Adiabatic pumping in the quasi-one-dimensional triangle lattice

We analyze the properties of the quasi-one-dimensional triangle lattice emphasizing the occurrence of flat bands and band touching via the tuning of the lattice hopping parameters and on-site energies. The spectral properties of the infinite system will be compared with the transmission through a finite piece of the lattice with attached semi-infinite leads. Furthermore, we investigate the adiabatic pumping properties of such a system: depending on the transmission through the lattice, this results in nonzero integer charge transfers or transfers that increase linearly with the lattice size

Massless Dirac-Weyl Fermions in a T_3 Optical Lattice

We propose an experimental setup for the observation of quasi-relativistic massless Fermions. It is based on a T_3 optical lattice, realized by three pairs of counter-propagating lasers, filled with fermionic cold atoms. We show that in the long wavelength approximation the T_3 Hamiltonian generalizes the Dirac-Weyl Hamiltonian for the honeycomb lattice, however, with a larger value of the pseudo-spin S=1. In addition to the Dirac cones, the spectrum includes a dispersionless branch of localized states producing a finite jump in the atomic density. Furthermore, implications for the Landau levels are discussed.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure

Nonlinear effects of phonon fluctuations on transport through nanoscale junctions

We analyze the effect of electron-phonon coupling on the full counting statistics of a molecular junction beyond the lowest order perturbation theory. Our approach allows to take into account analytically the feedback between the non-equilibrium phonon and electronic distributions in the quantum regime. We show that even for junctions with high transmission and relatively weak electron-phonon coupling this feedback gives rise to increasingly higher nonlinearities in the voltage dependence of the cumulants of the transmitted charges distribution.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure

Brane Cosmology and KK Gravitinos

The cosmology of KK gravitinos in models with extra dimensions is considered. The main result is that the production of such KK modes is not compatible with an epoch of non--standard expansion after inflation. This is so because the BBN constraint on the zero mode forces the reduced five dimensional Planck mass $M_5$ down to values much smaller than the usual four dimensional one, but this in turn implies many KK states available for a given temperature. Once these states are taken into account one finds that there is no $M_5$ for which the produced KK gravitinos satisfy BBN and overclosure constraints. This conclusion holds for both flat and warped models in which only gravity propagates in the full spacetime.Comment: 19 pages, references added, IoP styl

Electronic and atomic shell structure in aluminum nanowires

We report experiments on aluminum nanowires in ultra-high vacuum at room temperature that reveal a periodic spectrum of exceptionally stable structures. Two "magic" series of stable structures are observed: At low conductance, the formation of stable nanowires is governed by electronic shell effects whereas for larger contacts atomic packing dominates. The crossover between the two regimes is found to be smooth. A detailed comparison of the experimental results to a theoretical stability analysis indicates that while the main features of the observed electron-shell structure are similar to those of alkali and noble metals, a sequence of extremely stable wires plays a unique role in Aluminum. This series appears isolated in conductance histograms and can be attributed to "superdeformed" non-axisymmetric nanowires.Comment: 15 pages, 9 figure

Coupling of hydrodynamics and quasiparticle motion in collective modes of superfluid trapped Fermi gases

At finite temperature, the hydrodynamic collective modes of superfluid trapped Fermi gases are coupled to the motion of the normal component, which in the BCS limit behaves like a collisionless normal Fermi gas. The coupling between the superfluid and the normal components is treated in the framework of a semiclassical transport theory for the quasiparticle distribution function, combined with a hydrodynamic equation for the collective motion of the superfluid component. We develop a numerical test-particle method for solving these equations in the linear response regime. As a first application we study the temperature dependence of the collective quadrupole mode of a Fermi gas in a spherical trap. The coupling between the superfluid collective motion and the quasiparticles leads to a rather strong damping of the hydrodynamic mode already at very low temperatures. At higher temperatures the spectrum has a two-peak structure, the second peak corresponding to the quadrupole mode in the normal phase.Comment: 14 pages; v2: major changes (effect of Hartree field included