Quantum Oscillations in Nodal Line Systems

We study signatures of magnetic quantum oscillations in three-dimensional nodal line semimetals at zero temperature. The extended nature of the degenerate bands can result in a Fermi surface geometry with topological genus one, as well as a Fermi surface of electron and hole pockets encapsulating the nodal line. Moreover, the underlying two-band model to describe a nodal line is not unique, in that there are two classes of Hamiltonian with distinct band topology giving rise to the same Fermi surface geometry. After identifying the extremal cyclotron orbits in various magnetic field directions, we study their concomitant Landau levels and resulting quantum oscillation signatures. By Landau-fan-diagram analyses we extract the non-trivial $\pi$ Berry phase signature for extremal orbits linking the nodal line.Comment: 8 pages, 9 figure

Artificial Staggered Magnetic Field for Ultracold Atoms in Optical Lattices

A time-dependent optical lattice with staggered particle current in the tight-binding regime was considered that can be described by a time-independent effective lattice model with an artificial staggered magnetic field. The low energy description of a single-component fermion in this lattice at half-filling is provided by two copies of ideal two-dimensional massless Dirac fermions. The Dirac cones are generally anisotropic and can be tuned by the external staggered flux \p. For bosons, the staggered flux modifies the single-particle spectrum such that in the weak coupling limit, depending on the flux \p, distinct superfluid phases are realized. Their properties are discussed, the nature of the phase transitions between them is establised, and Bogoliubov theory is used to determine their excitation spectra. Then the generalized superfluid-Mott-insulator transition is studied in the presence of the staggered flux and the complete phase diagram is established. Finally, the momentum distribution of the distinct superfluid phases is obtained, which provides a clear experimental signature of each phase in ballistic expansion experiments.Comment: 14 pages, 5 figure

Propagation of collective pair excitations in disordered Bose superfluids

We study the effect of disorder on the propagation of collective excitations in a disordered Bose superfluid. We incorporate local density depletion induced by strong disorder at the meanfield level, and formulate the transport of the excitations in terms of a screened scattering problem. We show that the competition of disorder, screening, and density depletion induces a strongly non-monotonic energy dependence of the disorder parameter. In three dimensions, it results in a rich localization diagram with four different classes of mobility spectra, characterized by either no or up to three mobility edges. Implications on experiments with disordered ultracold atoms are discussed.Comment: 9 pages, 5 figure

Internal Josephson Oscillations for Distinct Momenta Bose-Einstein Condensates

The internal Josephson oscillations between an atomic Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) and a molecular one are studied for atoms in a square optical lattice subjected to a staggered gauge field. The system is described by a Bose-Hubbard model with complex and anisotropic hopping parameters that are different for each species, i.e., atoms and molecules. When the flux per plaquette for each species is small, the system oscillates between two conventional zero-momentum condensates. However, there is a regime of parameters in which Josephson oscillations between a vortex-carrying atomic condensate (finite momentum BEC) and a conventional zero-momentum molecular condensate may be realized. The experimental observation of the oscillations between these qualitatively distinct BEC's is possible with state-of-the-art Ramsey interference techniques.Comment: 8 pages, 6 figure

Competing Superconducting States for Ultracold Atoms in Optical Lattices with Artificial Staggered Magnetic Field

We study superconductivity in an ultracold Bose-Fermi mixture loaded into a square optical lattice subjected to a staggered flux. While the bosons form a superfluid at very low temperature and weak interaction, the interacting fermions experience an additional long-ranged attractive interaction mediated by phonons in the bosonic superfluid. This leads us to consider a generalized Hubbard model with on-site and nearest-neighbor attractive interactions, which give rise to two competing superconducting channels. We use the Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer theory to determine the regimes where distinct superconducting ground states are stabilized, and find that the non-local pairing channel favors a superconducting ground state which breaks both the gauge and the lattice symmetries, thus realizing unconventional superconductivity. Furthermore, the particular structure of the single-particle spectrum leads to unexpected consequences, for example, a dome-shaped superconducting region in the temperature versus filing fraction phase diagram, with a normal phase that comprises much richer physics than a Fermi-liquid. Notably, the relevant temperature regime and coupling strength is readily accessible in state of the art experiments with ultracold trapped atoms

Winding vector: how to annihilate two Dirac points with the same charge

The merging or emergence of a pair of Dirac points may be classified according to whether the winding numbers which characterize them are opposite ($+-$ scenario) or identical ($++$ scenario). From the touching point between two parabolic bands (one of them can be flat), two Dirac points with the {\it same} winding number emerge under appropriate distortion (interaction, etc), following the $++$ scenario. Under further distortion, these Dirac points merge following the $+-$ scenario, that is corresponding to {\it opposite} winding numbers. This apparent contradiction is solved by the fact that the winding number is actually defined around a unit vector on the Bloch sphere and that this vector rotates during the motion of the Dirac points. This is shown here within the simplest two-band lattice model (Mielke) exhibiting a flat band. We argue on several examples that the evolution between the two scenarios is general.Comment: 5 pages, 6 figure

Spin- and band-ferromagnetism in trilayer graphene

We study the ground state properties of an ABA-stacked trilayer graphene. The low energy band structure can be described by a combination of both a linear and a quadratic particle-hole symmetric dispersions, reminiscent of monolayer- and bilayer-graphene, respectively. The multi-band structure offers more channels for instability towards ferromagnetism when the Coulomb interaction is taken into account. Indeed, if one associates a pseudo-spin 1/2 degree of freedom to the bands (parabolic/linear), it is possible to realize also a band-ferromagnetic state, where there is a shift in the energy bands, since they fill up differently. By using a variational procedure, we compute the exchange energies for all possible variational ground states and identify the parameter space for the occurrence of spin- and band-ferromagnetic instabilities as a function of doping and interaction strength.Comment: 9 pages/ 8 figure