572 research outputs found
Visual cortex plasticity in the mouse: The role of Notch1 and proteomic analysis of new regulatory mechanisms
Verhage, M. [Promotor]Levelt, C.N. [Copromotor
Emergence of massless Dirac fermions in graphene's Hofstadter butterfly at switches of the quantum Hall phase connectivity
The fractal spectrum of magnetic minibands (Hofstadter butterfly), induced by
the moir\'e super- lattice of graphene on an hexagonal crystal substrate, is
known to exhibit gapped Dirac cones. We show that the gap can be closed by
slightly misaligning the substrate, producing a hierarchy of conical
singularities (Dirac points) in the band structure at rational values Phi =
(p/q)(h/e) of the magnetic flux per supercell. Each Dirac point signals a
switch of the topological quantum number in the connected component of the
quantum Hall phase diagram. Model calculations reveal the scale invariant
conductivity sigma = 2qe^2 / pi h and Klein tunneling associated with massless
Dirac fermions at these connectivity switches.Comment: 4 pages, 6 figures + appendix (3 pages, 1 figure
Andreev reflection from a topological superconductor with chiral symmetry
It was pointed out by Tewari and Sau that chiral symmetry (H -> -H if e
h) of the Hamiltonian of electron-hole (e-h) excitations in an N-mode
superconducting wire is associated with a topological quantum number
Q\in\mathbb{Z} (symmetry class BDI). Here we show that Q=Tr(r_{he}) equals the
trace of the matrix of Andreev reflection amplitudes, providing a link with the
electrical conductance G. We derive G=(2e^2/h)|Q| for |Q|=N,N-1, and more
generally provide a Q-dependent upper and lower bound on G. We calculate the
probability distribution P(G) for chaotic scattering, in the circular ensemble
of random-matrix theory, to obtain the Q-dependence of weak localization and
mesoscopic conductance fluctuations. We investigate the effects of chiral
symmetry breaking by spin-orbit coupling of the transverse momentum (causing a
class BDI-to-D crossover), in a model of a disordered semiconductor nanowire
with induced superconductivity. For wire widths less than the spin-orbit
coupling length, the conductance as a function of chemical potential can show a
sequence of 2e^2/h steps - insensitive to disorder.Comment: 10 pages, 5 figures. Corrected typo (missing square root) in
equations A13 and A1
NLC-2 graph recognition and isomorphism
NLC-width is a variant of clique-width with many application in graph
algorithmic. This paper is devoted to graphs of NLC-width two. After giving new
structural properties of the class, we propose a -time algorithm,
improving Johansson's algorithm \cite{Johansson00}. Moreover, our alogrithm is
simple to understand. The above properties and algorithm allow us to propose a
robust -time isomorphism algorithm for NLC-2 graphs. As far as we
know, it is the first polynomial-time algorithm.Comment: soumis \`{a} WG 2007; 12
Quantized conductance at the Majorana phase transition in a disordered superconducting wire
Superconducting wires without time-reversal and spin-rotation symmetries can
be driven into a topological phase that supports Majorana bound states. Direct
detection of these zero-energy states is complicated by the proliferation of
low-lying excitations in a disordered multi-mode wire. We show that the phase
transition itself is signaled by a quantized thermal conductance and electrical
shot noise power, irrespective of the degree of disorder. In a ring geometry,
the phase transition is signaled by a period doubling of the magnetoconductance
oscillations. These signatures directly follow from the identification of the
sign of the determinant of the reflection matrix as a topological quantum
number.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figures; v3: added appendix with numerics for long-range
disorde
Wigner-Poisson statistics of topological transitions in a Josephson junction
The phase-dependent bound states (Andreev levels) of a Josephson junction can
cross at the Fermi level, if the superconducting ground state switches between
even and odd fermion parity. The level crossing is topologically protected, in
the absence of time-reversal and spin-rotation symmetry, irrespective of
whether the superconductor itself is topologically trivial or not. We develop a
statistical theory of these topological transitions in an N-mode quantum-dot
Josephson junction, by associating the Andreev level crossings with the real
eigenvalues of a random non-Hermitian matrix. The number of topological
transitions in a 2pi phase interval scales as sqrt(N) and their spacing
distribution is a hybrid of the Wigner and Poisson distributions of
random-matrix theory.Comment: 12 pages, 15 figures; v2 to appear in PRL, with appendix in the
supplementary materia
Geodesic scattering by surface deformations of a topological insulator
We consider the classical ballistic dynamics of massless electrons on the
conducting surface of a three-dimensional topological insulator, influenced by
random variations of the surface height. By solving the geodesic equation and
the Boltzmann equation in the limit of shallow deformations, we obtain the
scattering cross section and the conductivity {\sigma}, for arbitrary
anisotropic dispersion relation. At large surface electron densities n this
geodesic scattering mechanism (with {\sigma} propto sqrt{n}) is more effective
at limiting the surface conductivity than electrostatic potential scattering.Comment: 9 pages, 5 figure
Quantum Hall effect in a one-dimensional dynamical system
We construct a periodically time-dependent Hamiltonian with a phase
transition in the quantum Hall universality class. One spatial dimension can be
eliminated by introducing a second incommensurate driving frequency, so that we
can study the quantum Hall effect in a one-dimensional (1D) system. This
reduction to 1D is very efficient computationally and would make it possible to
perform experiments on the 2D quantum Hall effect using cold atoms in a 1D
optical lattice.Comment: 8 pages, 6 figure
Quantum point contact as a probe of a topological superconductor
We calculate the conductance of a ballistic point contact to a
superconducting wire, produced by the s-wave proximity effect in a
semiconductor with spin-orbit coupling in a parallel magnetic field. The
conductance G as a function of contact width or Fermi energy shows plateaus at
half-integer multiples of 4e^2/h if the superconductor is in a topologically
nontrivial phase. In contrast, the plateaus are at the usual integer multiples
in the topologically trivial phase. Disorder destroys all plateaus except the
first, which remains precisely quantized, consistent with previous results for
a tunnel contact. The advantage of a ballistic contact over a tunnel contact as
a probe of the topological phase is the strongly reduced sensitivity to finite
voltage or temperature.Comment: 6 pages, 6 figures; corrected App.
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