4,040 research outputs found
Topological Superconductivity Intertwined with Broken Symmetries
Recently the superconductor and topological semimetal PbTaSe was
experimentally found to exhibit surface-only lattice rotational symmetry
breaking below . We exploit the Ginzburg-Landau free energy and propose a
microscopic two-channel model to study possible superconducting states on the
surface of PbTaSe. We identify two types of topological superconducting
states. One is time-reversal invariant and preserves the lattice hexagonal
symmetry while the other breaks both symmetries. We find that such
time-reversal symmetry breaking is unavoidable for a superconducting state in a
two dimensional irreducible representation of crystal point group in a system
where the spatial inversion symmetry is broken and the strong spin-orbit
coupling is present. Our findings will guide the search for topological chiral
superconductors.Comment: 4+5 pages, 5 figure
Floquet topological insulator phase in a Weyl semimetal thin film with disorder
We investigate the effects of periodic fields and disorder on topological
properties of a Weyl-semimetal thin film. The two periodic fields, i.e., a
periodic magnetic field and elliptically polarized light, are discussed
respectively. By use of the Floquet theory, we find that both the two periodic
drives can resonantly induce the topological transitions from normal insulator
(NI) phases to Floquet topological insulator (FTI) phases. The Floquet
topological transitions are characterized by variation of Chern number.
Moreover, we show that the Floquet topological transitions can be explained by
a combination of the quantum well approximation and the rotating wave
approximation. In the disordered Weyl-semimetal thin film model under periodic
fields, we calculate the Bott index to characterize topological phase. It is
found that the FTI phase is robust against weak disorder, and collapses for
strong disorder strength. Interestingly, we find that disorder can also induce
a topological transition from a topological trivial phase to an FTI phase,
establishing the Floquet topological Anderson insulator (FTAI) phase. Finally,
an effective-medium theory based on the Born approximation further confirms the
numerical conclusions
Topological Anderson insulator phase in a Dirac-semimetal thin film
The recently discovered topological Dirac semimetal represents a new exotic
quantum state of matter. Topological Dirac semimetals can be viewed as three
dimensional analogues of graphene, in which the Dirac nodes are protected by
crystalline symmetry. It has been found that quantum confinement effect can gap
out Dirac nodes and convert Dirac semimetal to a band insulator. The band
insulator is either normal insulator or quantum spin Hall insulator depending
on the thin film thickness. We present the study of disorder effects in thin
film of Dirac semimetals. It is found that moderate Anderson disorder strength
can drive a topological phase transition from normal band insulator to
topological Anderson insulator in Dirac semimetal thin film. The numerical
calculation based on the model parameters of Dirac semimetal NaBi shows
that in the topological Anderson insulator phase a quantized conductance
plateau occurs in the bulk gap of band insulator, and the distributions of
local currents further confirm that the quantized conductance plateau arises
from the helical edge states induced by disorder. Finally, an effective medium
theory based on Born approximation fits the numerical data
Disorder-induced topological phase transitions on Lieb lattices
Motivated by the very recent experimental realization of electronic Lieb
lattices and research interest on topological states of matter, we study the
topological phase transitions driven by Anderson disorder on spin-orbit coupled
Lieb lattices in the presence of spin-independent and dependent potentials. By
combining the numerical transport and self-consistent Born approximation
methods, we found that both time-reversal invariant and broken Lieb lattices
can host disorder-induced gapful topological phases, including the quantum spin
Hall insulator (QSHI) and quantum anomalous Hall insulator (QAHI) phases. For
the time-reversal invariant case, this disorder can induce a topological phase
transition directly from normal insulator (NI) to the QSHI. While for the
time-reversal broken case, the disorder can induce either a QAHI-QSHI phase
transition or a NI-QAHI-QSHI phase transition. Remarkably, the time-reversal
broken QSHI phase can be induced by Anderson disorder on the spin-orbit coupled
Lieb lattices without time-reversal symmetry.Comment: accepted for publication in Phys. Rev.
The effect of in-plane magnetic field and applied strain in quantum spin Hall systems: application to InAs/GaSb quantum wells
Motivated by the recent discovery of quantized spin Hall effect in InAs/GaSb
quantum wells\cite{du2013}\cite{xu2014}, we theoretically study the effects
of in-plane magnetic field and strain effect to the quantization of charge
conductance by using Landauer-Butikker formalism. Our theory predicts a
robustness of the conductance quantization against the magnetic field up to a
very high field of 20 tesla. We use a disordered hopping term to model the
strain and show that the strain may help the quantization of the conductance.
Relevance to the experiments will be discussed.Comment: 8 pages, 10 figures. Comments are welcome
Optimal Actuator Location of the Minimum Norm Controls for Heat Equation with General Controlled Domain
In this paper, we study optimal actuator location of the minimum norm
controls for a multi-dimensional heat equation with control defined in the
space . The actuator domain is quite general in
the sense that it is required only to have a prescribed Lebesgue measure. A
relaxation problem is formulated and is transformed into a two-person zero-sum
game problem. By the game theory, we develop a necessary and sufficient
condition and the existence of relaxed optimal actuator location for
, which is characterized by the Nash equilibrium of the
associated game problem. An interesting case is for the case of , for
which it is shown that the classical optimal actuator location can be obtained
from the relaxed optimal actuator location without additional condition.
Finally for , a sufficient and necessary condition for classical optimal
actuator location is presented.Comment: 41 page
Waiting times and stopping probabilities for patterns in Markov chains
Suppose that is a finite collection of patterns. Observe a
Markov chain until one of the patterns in occurs as a run. This
time is denoted by . In this paper, we aim to give an easy way to
calculate the mean waiting time and the stopping probabilities
with , where is the waiting time
until the pattern appears as a run.Comment: 13 page
Theory for Spin Selective Andreev Reflection in Vortex Core of Topological Superconductor: Majorana Zero Modes on Spherical Surface and Application to Spin Polarized Scanning Tunneling Microscope Probe
Majorana zero modes (MZMs) have been predicted to exist in the topological
insulator (TI)/superconductor (SC) heterostructure. Recent spin polarized
scanning tunneling microscope (STM) experiment has observed
spin-polarization dependence of the zero bias differential tunneling
conductance at the center of vortex core, which may be attributed to the spin
selective Andreev reflection, a novel property of the MZMs theoretically
predicted in 1-dimensional nanowire. Here we consider a helical electron
system described by a Rashba spin orbit coupling Hamiltonian on a spherical
surface with a s-wave superconducting pairing due to proximity effect. We
examine in-gap excitations of a pair of vortices with one at the north pole and
the other at the south pole. While the MZM is not a spin eigenstate, the spin
wavefunction of the MZM at the center of the vortex core, r = 0, is parallel to
the magnetic field, and the local Andreev reflection of the MZM is spin
selective, namely occurs only when the STM tip has the spin polarization
parallel to the magnetic field, similar to the case in 1-dimensional nanowire2.
The total local differential tunneling conductance consists of the normal term
proportional to the local density of states and an additional term arising from
the Andreev reflection. We also discuss the finite size effect, for which the
MZM at the north pole is hybridized with the MZM at the south pole. We apply
our theory to examine the recently reported spin-polarized STM experiments and
show good agreement with the experiments.Comment: 14 pages, 14 figures, 1 table. Comments are welcome
Optimal operating protocol to achieve efficiency at maximum power of heat engines
The efficiency at maximum power has been investigated extensively, yet the
practical control scheme to achieve it remains elusive. We fill such gap with a
stepwise Carnot-like cycle, which consists the discrete isothermal process
(DIP) and adiabatic process. With DIP, we validate the widely adopted
assumption of \mathscr{C}/t relation of the irreversible entropy generation
S^{(\mathrm{ir})}, and show the explicit dependence of the coefficient
\mathscr{C} on the fluctuation of the speed of tuning energy levels as well as
the microscopic coupling constants to the heat baths. Such dependence allows to
control the irreversible entropy generation by choosing specific control
schemes. We further demonstrate the achievable efficiency at maximum power and
the corresponding control scheme with the simple two-level system. Our current
work opens new avenues for the experimental test, which was not feasible due to
the lack the of the practical control scheme in the previous low-dissipation
model or its equivalents.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figures, comments are welcome ([email protected]
Finite-size effects in non-Hermitian topological systems
We systematically investigate the finite-size effects in non-Hermitian
one-dimensional (1D) Su-Schrieffer-Heeger (SSH) and two-dimensional (2D) Chern
insulator models. Using a combination of analytical and numerical calculations,
we show that the non-Hermitian intra-cell hoppings in the SSH model can modify
the localization lengths of bulk and end states, giving rise to a complex
finite-size energy gap that exhibits an oscillating exponential decay as the
chain length grows. However, the imaginary staggered on-site potentials in the
SSH model only change the end-state energy, leaving the localization lengths of
the system unchanged. In this case, the finite-size energy gap can undergo a
transition from real values to imaginary values. We observed similar phenomena
for the finite-size effect in 2D Chern insulator systems.Comment: 12 pages, 12 figures. Accepted by Physical Review
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