Spin Hall effect and Berry phase in two dimensional electron gas

The spin Hall effect is investigated in a high mobility two dimensional electron system with the spin-orbital coupling of both the Rashba and the Dresselhaus types. A spin current perpendicular to the electric field is generated by either the Rashba or the Dresselhaus coupling. The spin Hall conductance is independent of the stength of the coupling, but its sign is determined by the relative ratio of the two couplings. The direction of spin current is controllable by tuning the magnitude of the surface electric field perpendicular to the two dimensional plane via adjusting the Rashba coupling. It is observed that the spin Hall conductance has a close relation to the Berry phase of conduction electrons.Comment: 4 paper, 1 figure

Topological superconducting states in monolayer FeSe/SrTiO3_{3}

The monolayer FeSe with a thickness of one unit cell grown on a single-crystal SrTiO$_{3}$ substrate (FeSe/STO) exhibits striking high-temperature superconductivity with transition temperature $T_{c}$ over 65K reported by recent experimental measurements. In this work, through analyzing the distinctive electronic structure, and providing systematic classification of the pairing symmetry , we find that both $s$-and $p$-wave pairing with odd parity give rise to topological superconducting states in monolayer FeSe, and the exotic properties of $s$-wave topological superconducting states have close relations with the unique non-symmorphic lattice structure which induces the orbital-momentum locking. Our results indicate that the monolayer FeSe could be in the topological nontrivial $s$-wave superconducting states if the relevant effective pairing interactions are dominant in comparison with other candidates.Comment: 11 pages, 4 figure

Spin transverse force and quantum transverse transport

We present a brief review on spin transverse force, which exerts on the spin as the electron is moving in an electric field. This force, analogue to the Lorentz force on electron charge, is perpendicular to the electric field and spin current carried by the electron. The force stems from the spin-orbit coupling of electrons as a relativistic quantum effect, and could be used to understand the Zitterbewegung of electron wave packet and the quantum transverse transport of electron in a heuristic way.Comment: 4 pages, manuscript of invited talk on IAS Workshop on Spintronics at Nanyang Techological University, Singapore, 200

Quantum Anomalous Hall Effect in Flat Band Ferromagnet

We proposed a theory of quantum anomalous Hall effect in a flat-band ferromagnet on a two-dimensional (2D) decorated lattice with spin-orbit coupling. Free electrons on the lattice have dispersionless flat bands, and the ground state is highly degenerate when each lattice site is occupied averagely by one electron, i.e., the system is at half filling. The on-site Coulomb interaction can remove the degeneracy and give rise to the ferrimagnetism, which is the coexistence of the ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic long-range orders. On the other hand the spin-orbit coupling makes the band structure topologically non-trivial, and produces the quantum spin Hall effect with a pair of helical edge states around the system boundary. Based on the rigorous results for the Hubbard model, we found that the Coulomb interaction can provide an effective staggered potential and turn the quantum spin Hall phase into a quantum anomalous Hall phase

Topological phase in one-dimensional interacting fermion system

We study a one-dimensional interacting topological model by means of exact diagonalization method. The topological properties are firstly examined with the existence of the edge states at half-filling. We find that the topological phases are not only robust to small repulsive interactions but also are stabilized by small attractive interactions, and also finite repulsive interaction can drive a topological non-trivial phase into a trivial one while the attractive interaction can drive a trivial phase into a non-trivial one. Next we calculate the Berry phase and parity of the bulk system and find that they are equivalent in characterizing the topological phases. With them we obtain the critical interaction strengths and construct part of the phase diagram in the parameters space. Finally we discuss the effective Hamiltonian at large-U limit and provide additional understanding of the numerical results. Our these results could be realized experimentally using cold atoms trapped in the 1D optical lattice.Comment: 7 pages, 5 figures; revised version, references added, Accepted for publication in Physical Review

Finite-temperature conductivity and magnetoconductivity of topological insulators

The electronic transport experiments on topological insulators exhibit a dilemma. A negative cusp in magnetoconductivity is widely believed as a quantum transport signature of the topological surface states, which are immune from localization and exhibit the weak antilocalization. However, the measured conductivity drops logarithmically when lowering temperature, showing a typical feature of the weak localization as in ordinary disordered metals. Here, we present a conductivity formula for massless and massive Dirac fermions as a function of magnetic field and temperature, by taking into account the electron-electron interaction and quantum interference simultaneously. The formula reconciles the dilemma by explicitly clarifying that the temperature dependence of the conductivity is dominated by the interaction while the magnetoconductivity is mainly contributed by the quantum interference. The theory paves the road to quantitatively study the transport in topological insulators and other two-dimensional Dirac-like systems, such as graphene, transition metal dichalcogenides, and silicene.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figure

Electric-Field-Induced Resonant Spin Polarization in a Two-Dimensional Electron Gas

Electric response of spin polarization in two-dimensional electron gas with structural inversion asymmetry subjected to a magnetic field was studied by means of the linear and non-linear theory and numerical simulation with the disorder effect. It was found by Kubo linear reponse theory that an electric resonant response of spin polarization occurs when the Fermi surface is located near the crossing of two Landau levels, which is induced from the competition between the spin-orbit coupling and Zeeman splitting. The scaling behavior was investigated with a simplified two-level model by non-linear method, and the resonant peak value is reciprocally proportional to the electric field at low temperatures and to temperature for finite electric fields. Finally numerical simulation illustrated that impurity potential opens an enegy gap near the resonant point and suppresses the effect gradually with the increasing strength of disorder. This resonant effect may provide an efficient way to control spin polarization by an external electric field.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figure

Ordered valence bond states in symmetric two-dimensional spin-orbital systems

We consider a superexchange Hamiltonian, $H=-\sum_{}(2{\bf S}_i\cdot {\bf S}_j-\frac 12)(2{\bf T}_i\cdot {\bf T}_j-\frac 12)$, which describes systems with orbital degeneracy and strong electron-phonon coupling in the limit of large on-site repulsion. In an SU(4) Schwinger boson representation, a reduced spin-orbital interaction is derived {\it exactly}, and a mean field theory has been developed by introducing a symmetric valence bond pairing order parameter. In one dimension, a spin-orbital liquid state with a finite gap is obtained. On a two-dimensional square lattice a novel type of spin-orbital ferromagnetically ordered state appears, while spin and orbital are antiferromagnetic. Moreover, an important relation has been found, relating the spin and orbital correlation functions to the combined spin-orbital ones.Comment: four pages in Revtex, no figures, accepted for publication in Physical Review Letter

Extrinsic anomalous Hall conductivity of a topologically nontrivial conduction band

A key step towards dissipationless transport devices is the quantum anomalous Hall effect, which is characterized by an integer quantized Hall conductance in a ferromagnetic insulator with strong spin-orbit coupling. In this work, the anomalous Hall effect due to the impurity scattering, namely the extrinsic anomalous Hall effect, is studied when the Fermi energy crosses with the topologically nontrivial conduction band of a quantum anomalous Hall system. Two major extrinsic contributions, the side-jump and skew-scattering Hall conductivities, are calculated using the diagrammatic techniques in which both nonmagnetic and magnetic scattering are taken into account simultaneously. The side-jump Hall conductivity changes its sign at a critical sheet carrier density for the nontrivial phase, while it remains sign unchanged for the trivial phase. The critical sheet carrier densities estimated with realistic parameters lie in an experimentally accessible range. The results imply that a quantum anomalous Hall system could be identified in the good-metal regime.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure