Brownian scattering of a spinon in a Luttinger liquid

We consider strongly interacting one-dimensional electron liquids where elementary excitations carry either spin or charge. At small temperatures a spinon created at the bottom of its band scatters off low-energy spin- and charge-excitations and follows the diffusive motion of a Brownian particle in momentum space. We calculate the mobility characterizing these processes, and show that the resulting diffusion coefficient of the spinon is parametrically enhanced at low temperatures compared to that of a mobile impurity in a spinless Luttinger liquid. We briefly discuss that this hints at the relevance of spin in the process of equilibration of strongly interacting one-dimensional electrons, and comment on implications for transport in clean single channel quantum wires

Strong Anderson localization in cold atom quantum quenches

Signatures of strong Anderson localization in the momentum distribution of a cold atom cloud after a quantum quench are studied. We consider a quasi one-dimensional cloud initially prepared in a well defined momentum state, and expanding for some time in a disorder speckle potential. Anderson localization leads to a formation of a coherence peak in the \emph{forward} scattering direction (as opposed to the common weak localization backscattering peak). We present a microscopic, and fully time resolved description of the phenomenon, covering the entire diffusion--to--localization crossover. Our results should be observable by present day technology.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures, published versio

Echo spectroscopy of Anderson localization

We propose a conceptually new framework to study the onset of Anderson localization in disordered systems. The idea is to expose waves propagating in a random scattering environment to a sequence of short dephasing pulses. The system responds through coherence peaks forming at specific echo times, each echo representing a particular process of quantum interference. We suggest a concrete realization for cold gases, where quantum interferences are observed in the momentum distribution of matter waves in a laser speckle potential. This defines a challenging, but arguably realistic framework promising to yield unprecedented insight into the mechanisms of Anderson localization.Comment: 14 pages, 7 figures; published versio

Incoherent pair tunneling in the pseudogap phase of cuprates

Motivated by a recent experiment by Bergeal et al., we reconsider incoherent pair tunneling in a cuprate junction formed from an optimally doped superconducting lead and an underdoped normal metallic lead. We study the impact of the pseudogap on the pair tunneling by describing fermions in the underdoped lead with a model self-energy that has been developed to reproduce photoemission data. We find that the pseudogap causes an additional temperature dependent suppression of the pair contribution to the tunneling current. We discuss consistency with available experimental data and propose future experimental directions.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure

Spin Hamiltonian of Hyperkagome Na4Ir3O8

We derive the spin Hamiltonian for the quantum spin liquid Na4Ir3O8, and then estimate the direct and superexchange contributions between near neighbor iridium ions using a tight binding parametrization of the electronic structure. We find a magnitude of the exchange interaction comparable to experiment for a reasonable value of the on-site Coulomb repulsion. For one of the two tight binding parametrizations we have studied, the direct exchange term, which is isotropic, dominates the total exchange. This provides support for those theories proposed to describe this novel quantum spin liquid that assume an isotropic Heisenberg model.Comment: 9 pages, 4 figure

Electronic Structure of Hyperkagome Na4Ir3O8

We investigate the electronic structure of the frustrated magnet Na4Ir3O8 using density functional theory. Due to strong spin-orbit coupling, the hyperkagome lattice is characterized by a half-filled complex of states, making it a cubic iridium analogue of the high temperature superconducting cuprates. The implications of our results for this unique material are discussed.Comment: expanded discussion with extra figures - 6 pages, 10 figure