Electronic states of pseudospin-1 fermions in dice lattice ribbons

Boundary conditions for the two-dimensional fermions in ribbons of the hexagonal lattice are studied in the dice model whose energy spectrum in infinite system consists of three bands with one completely flat band of zero energy. Like in graphene the regular lattice terminations are of the armchair and zigzag types. However, there are four possible zigzag edge terminations in contrast to graphene where only one type of zigzag termination is possible. Determining the boundary conditions for these lattice terminations, the energy spectra of pseudospin-1 fermions in dice model ribbons with zigzag and armchair boundary conditions are found. It is shown that the energy levels for armchair ribbons display the same features as in graphene except the zero energy flat band inherent to the dice model. In addition, unlike graphene, there are no propagating edge states localized at zigzag boundary and there are specific zigzag terminations which give rise to bulk modes of a metallic type in dice model ribbons. We find that the existence of the flat zero-energy band in the dice model is very robust and is not affected by the zigzag and armchair boundaries.Comment: 16 pages, 7 figure

Size effects on atomic collapse in the dice lattice

We study the role of size effects on atomic collapse of charged impurity in the flat band system. The tight-binding simulations are made for the dice lattice with circular quantum dot shapes. It is shown that the mixing of in-gap edge states with bound states in impurity potential leads to increasing the critical charge value. This effect, together with enhancement of gap due to spatial quantization, makes it more difficult to observe the dive-into-continuum phenomenon in small quantum dots. At the same time, we show that if in-gap states are filled, the resonant tunneling to bound state in the impurity potential might occur at much smaller charge, which demonstrates non-monotonous dependence with the size of sample lattice. In addition, we study the possibility of creating supercritical localized potential well on different sublattices, and show that it is possible only on rim sites, but not on hub site. The predicted effects are expected to naturally occur in artificial flat band lattices.Comment: 7 pages, 6 figure

Current distribution and group velocities for electronic states on α−T3\alpha-\mathcal{T}_3 lattice ribbons in a magnetic field

We study the group velocities of electronic states and distributions of currents in $\alpha-\mathcal{T}_3$ lattice ribbons under a uniform perpendicular magnetic field. Using the effective low-energy model we analyze all possible simple configurations of lattice termination with zigzag and armchair boundaries. We show that the edge current depends on the type of zigzag termination, and can be zero or finite near the edge. Also similar dependence is observed in the case of armchair termination and is related to the size of the ribbon. The nonzero current flowing along the edge can be used a signature of formation of propagating edge states. Also we show the qualitative difference in the distribution of the edge current between the case of $\alpha=1$ (dice model) and other values of model parameter $\alpha\neq 1$ for armchair-terminated ribbons.Comment: 11 pages, 6 figure

Shot noise distinguishes Majorana fermions from vortices injected in the edge mode of a chiral p-wave superconductor

The chiral edge modes of a topological superconductor support two types of excitations: fermionic quasiparticles known as Majorana fermions and $\pi$-phase domain walls known as edge vortices. Edge vortices are injected pairwise into counter-propagating edge modes by a flux bias or voltage bias applied to a Josephson junction. An unpaired edge mode carries zero electrical current on average, but there are time-dependent current fluctuations. We calculate the shot noise power produced by a sequence of edge vortices and find that it increases logarithmically with their spacing - even if the spacing is much larger than the core size so the vortices do not overlap. This nonlocality produces an anomalous V log V increase of the shot noise in a voltage-biased geometry, which serves as a distinguishing feature in comparison with the linear-in-V Majorana fermion shot noise.Comment: 15 pages, 4 figure

Optical conductivity of bilayer dice lattices

We calculate optical conductivity for bilayer dice lattices in commensurate vertically aligned stackings. The interband optical conductivity reveals a rich activation behavior unique for each of the four stackings. We found that the intermediate energy band, which corresponds to the flat band of a single-layer dice lattice, plays a different role for different stackings. The interband selection rules, which are crucial for the single-layer lattice, may become lifted in bilayer lattices. The results for effective and tight-binding models are found to be in qualitative agreement for some of the stackings and the reasons for the discrepancies for others are identified. Our findings propose optical conductivity as an effective tool to distinguish between different stackings in bilayer dice lattices.Comment: 22 pages, 14 multi-panel figure

Stackings and effective models of bilayer dice lattices

We introduce and classify nonequivalent commensurate stackings for bilayer dice or $\mathcal{T}_3$ lattice. For each of the four stackings with vertical alignment of sites in two layers, a tight-binding model and an effective model describing the properties in the vicinity of the threefold band-crossing points are derived. Focusing on these band-crossing points, we found that although the energy spectrum remains always gapless, depending on the stacking, different types of quasiparticle spectra arise. They include those with flat, tilted, anisotropic semi-Dirac, and $C_3$-corrugated energy bands. We use the derived tight-binding models to calculate the density of states and the spectral function. The corresponding results reveal drastic redistribution of the spectral weight due to the inter-layer coupling that is unique for each of the stackings.Comment: 15 pages, 9 multi-panel figure