546 research outputs found
Skyrme and Wigner crystals in graphene
At low-energy, the band structure of graphene can be approximated by two
degenerate valleys about which the electronic spectra of the
valence and conduction bands have linear dispersion relations. An electronic
state in this band spectrum is a linear superposition of states from the
and sublattices of the honeycomb lattice of graphene. In a quantizing
magnetic field, the band spectrum is split into Landau levels with level N=0
having zero weight on the sublattice for the valley.
Treating the valley index as a pseudospin and assuming the real spins to be
fully polarized, we compute the energy of Wigner and Skyrme crystals in the
Hartree-Fock approximation. We show that Skyrme crystals have lower energy than
Wigner crystals \textit{i.e.} crystals with no pseudospin texture in some range
of filling factor around integer fillings. The collective mode spectrum
of the valley-skyrmion crystal has three linearly-dispersing Goldstone modes in
addition to the usual phonon mode while a Wigner crystal has only one extra
Goldstone mode with a quadratic dispersion. We comment on how these modes
should be affected by disorder and how, in principle, a microwave absorption
experiment could distinguish between Wigner and Skyrme crystals.Comment: 14 pages with 11 figure
Power-law Kohn anomaly in undoped graphene induced by Coulomb interactions
Phonon dispersions generically display nonanalytic points, known as Kohn anomalies, due to electron-phonon interactions. We analyze this phenomenon for a zone-boundary phonon in undoped graphene. When electron-electron interactions with coupling constant \beta are taken into account, one observes behavior demonstrating that the electrons are in a critical phase: the phonon dispersion and lifetime develop power-law behavior with \beta-dependent exponents. The observation of this signature would allow experimental access to the critical properties of the electron state, and would provide a measure of its proximity to an excitonic insulating phase
Interference between independent fluctuating condensates
We consider a problem of interference between two independent condensates,
which lack true long range order. We show that their interference pattern
contains information about correlation functions within each condensate. As an
example we analyze the interference between a pair of one dimensional
interacting Bose liquids. We find universal scaling of the average fringe
contrast with system size and temperature that depends only on the Luttinger
parameter. Moreover the full distribution of the fringe contrast, which is also
equivalent to the full counting statistics of the interfering atoms, changes
with interaction strength and lends information on high order correlation
functions. We also demonstrate that the interference between two-dimensional
condensates at finite temperature can be used as a direct probe of the
Kosterlitz-Thouless transition. Finally, we discuss generalization of our
results to describe the intereference of a periodic array of independent
fluctuating condensates.Comment: 7 pages, 3 figures, published versio
Collective modes of CP(3) Skyrmion crystals in quantum Hall ferromagnets
The two-dimensional electron gas in a bilayer quantum Hall system can sustain
an interlayer coherence at filling factor nu=1 even in the absence of tunneling
between the layers. This system has low-energy charged excitations which may
carry textures in real spin or pseudospin. Away from filling factor nu =1 a
finite density of these is present in the ground state of the 2DEG and forms a
crystal. Depending on the relative size of the various energy scales, such as
tunneling (Delta_SAS), Zeeman coupling (Delta_Z) or electrical bias (Delta_b),
these textured crystal states can involve spin, pseudospin, or both
intertwined. In this article, we present a comprehensive numerical study of the
collective excitations of these textured crystals using the GRPA. For the pure
spin case, at finite Zeeman coupling the state is a Skyrmion crystal with a
gapless phonon mode, and a separate Goldstone mode that arises from a broken
U(1) symmetry. At zero Zeeman coupling, we demonstrate that the constituent
Skyrmions break up, and the resulting state is a meron crystal with 4 gapless
modes. In contrast, a pure pseudospin Skyrme crystal at finite tunneling has
only the phonon mode. For Delta_SAS=0, the state evolves into a meron crystal
and supports an extra gapless U(1) mode in addition to the phonon. For a CP(3)
Skyrmion crystal, we find a U(1) gapless mode in the presence of the
symmetry-breaking fields. In addition, a second mode with a very small gap is
present in the spectrum.Comment: 16 pages and 12 eps figure
Bose-Condensed Gases in a 1D Optical Lattice at Finite Temperatures
We study equilibrium properties of Bose-Condensed gases in a one-dimensional
(1D) optical lattice at finite temperatures. We assume that an additional
harmonic confinement is highly anisotropic, in which the confinement in the
radial directions is much tighter than in the axial direction. We derive a
quasi-1D model of the Gross-Pitaeavkill equation and the Bogoliubov equations,
and numerically solve these equations to obtain the condensate fraction as a
function of the temperature.Comment: Comments: 6 pages, 3 figures, submitted to Quantum Fluids and Solids
Conference (QFS 2006
Theory of Activated Transport in Bilayer Quantum Hall Systems
We analyze the transport properties of bilayer quantum Hall systems at total
filling factor in drag geometries as a function of interlayer bias, in
the limit where the disorder is sufficiently strong to unbind meron-antimeron
pairs, the charged topological defects of the system. We compute the typical
energy barrier for these objects to cross incompressible regions within the
disordered system using a Hartree-Fock approach, and show how this leads to
multiple activation energies when the system is biased. We then demonstrate
using a bosonic Chern-Simons theory that in drag geometries, current in a
single layer directly leads to forces on only two of the four types of merons,
inducing dissipation only in the drive layer. Dissipation in the drag layer
results from interactions among the merons, resulting in very different
temperature dependences for the drag and drive layers, in qualitative agreement
with experiment.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figure
Signature of Quantum Hall Effect Skyrmions in Tunneling: A Theoretical Study
We present a theoretical study of the tunneling characteristic between
two parallel two-dimensional electron gases in a perpendicular magnetic field
when both are near filling factor . Finite-size calculations of the
single-layer spectral functions in the spherical geometry and analytical
expressions for the disk geometry in the thermodynamic limit show that the
current in the presence of skyrmions reflects in a direct way their underlying
structure. It is also shown that fingerprints of the electron-electron
interaction pseudopotentials are present in such a current.Comment: 4 pages, 1 figur
Electron-Electron Interactions and the Hall-Insulator
Using the Kubo formula, we show explicitly that a non-interacting electron
system can not behave like a Hall-insulator, {\it ie.,} a DC resistivity matrix
and finite in the zero temperature
limit, as has been observed recently in experiment. For a strongly interacting
electron system in a magnetic field, we illustrate, by constructing a specific
form of correlations between mobile and localized electrons, that the Hall
resistivity can approximately equal to its classical value. A Hall-insulator is
realized in this model when the density of mobile electrons becomes vanishingly
small. It is shown that in non-interacting electron systems, the
zero-temperature frequency-dependent conductacnce generally does not give the
DC conductance.Comment: 11 pages, RevTeX3.
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