Quantum many-body theory for electron spin decoherence in nanoscale nuclear spin baths

Decoherence of electron spins in nanoscale systems is important to quantum technologies such as quantum information processing and magnetometry. It is also an ideal model problem for studying the crossover between quantum and classical phenomena. At low temperatures or in light-element materials where the spin-orbit coupling is weak, the phonon scattering in nanostructures is less important and the fluctuations of nuclear spins become the dominant decoherence mechanism for electron spins. Since 1950s, semiclassical noise theories have been developed for understanding electron spin decoherence. In spin-based solid-state quantum technologies, the relevant systems are in the nanometer scale and the nuclear spin baths are quantum objects which require a quantum description. Recently, quantum pictures have been established to understand the decoherence and quantum many-body theories have been developed to quantitatively describe this phenomenon. Anomalous quantum effects have been predicted and some have been experimentally confirmed. A systematically truncated cluster correlation expansion theory has been developed to account for the many-body correlations in nanoscale nuclear spin baths that are built up during the electron spin decoherence. The theory has successfully predicted and explained a number of experimental results in a wide range of physical systems. In this review, we will cover these recent progresses. The limitations of the present quantum many-body theories and possible directions for future development will also be discussed.Comment: 44 pages, 29 figures, corrected many typos and added some reference

Topological invariants for holographic semimetals

We study the behavior of fermion spectral functions for the holographic topological Weyl and nodal line semimetals. We calculate the topological invariants from the Green functions of both holographic semimetals using the topological Hamiltonian method, which calculates topological invariants of strongly interacting systems from an effective Hamiltonian system with the same topological structure. Nontrivial topological invariants for both systems have been obtained and the presence of nontrivial topological invariants further supports the topological nature of the holographic semimetals.Comment: 39 pages, 11 figures, 1 table; v2: match published versio

Topological nodal line semimetals in holography

We show a holographic model of a strongly coupled topological nodal line semimetal (NLSM) and find that the NLSM phase could go through a quantum phase transition to a topologically trivial state. The dual fermion spectral function shows that there are multiple Fermi surfaces each of which is a closed nodal loop in the NLSM phase. The topological structure in the bulk is induced by the IR interplay between the dual mass operator and the operator that deforms the topology of the Fermi surface. We propose a practical framework for building various strongly coupled topological semimetals in holography, which indicates that at strong coupling topologically nontrivial semimetal states generally exist.Comment: 21 pages, 5 figures; v2: match published versio

Phase transitions, geometrothermodynamics and critical exponents of black holes with conformal anomaly

We investigate the phase transitions of black holes with conformal anomaly in canonical ensemble from different perspectives. Some interesting and novel phase transition phenomena have been discovered. Firstly, we discuss the behavior of the specific heat and the inverse of the isothermal compressibility. It is shown that there are striking differences in Hawking temperature and phase structure between black holes with conformal anomaly and those without it. In the case with conformal anomaly, there exists local minimum temperature corresponding to the phase transition point. Phase transitions take place not only from an unstable large black hole to a locally stable medium black hole but also from an unstable medium black hole to a locally stable small black hole. Secondly, we probe in details the dependence of phase transitions on the choice of parameters. The results show that black holes with conformal anomaly have much richer phase structure than those without it. There would be two, only one or no phase transition points depending on the parameters we have chosen. The corresponding parameter region are derived both numerically and graphically. Thirdly, geometrothermodynamics are built up to examine the phase structure we have discovered. It is shown that Legendre invariant thermodynamic scalar curvature diverges exactly where the specific heat diverges. Furthermore, critical behaviors are investigated by calculating the relevant critical exponents. It is proved that these critical exponents satisfy the thermodynamic scaling laws, leading to the conclusion that critical exponents and the scaling laws can reserve even when we consider conformal anomaly.Comment: some new references adde