arXiv subjects

Alexander B. Watson

Publications and source records attributed to Alexander B. Watson.

27 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv2021

Existence of the first magic angle for the chiral model of bilayer graphene

We consider the chiral model of twisted bilayer graphene introduced by Tarnopolsky-Kruchkov-Vishwanath (TKV). TKV have proved that for inverse twist angles $α$ such that the effective Fermi velocity at the moiré $K$ point vanishes, the chiral model has a perfectly flat band at zero energy over the whole Brillouin zone. By a formal expansion, TKV found that the Fermi velocity vanishes at $α\approx .586$. In this work, we give a proof that the Fermi velocity vanishes for at least one $α$ between $.57$ and $.61$ by rigorously justifying TKV's formal expansion of the Fermi velocity over a sufficiently large interval of $α$ values. The idea of the proof is to project the TKV Hamiltonian onto a finite dimensional subspace, and then expand the Fermi velocity in terms of explicitly computable linear combinations of modes in the subspace, while controlling the error. The proof relies on two propositions whose proofs are computer-assisted, i.e., numerical computation together with worst-case estimates on the accumulation of round-off error which show that round-off error cannot possibly change the conclusion of the computation. The propositions give a bound below on the spectral gap of the projected Hamiltonian, an Hermitian $80 \times 80$ matrix whose spectrum is symmetric about $0,$ and verify that two real 18th order polynomials, which approximate the numerator of the Fermi velocity, take values with definite sign when evaluated at specific values of $α$. Together with TKV's work our result proves existence of at least one perfectly flat band of the chiral model.

math-ph↗

arXiv2021

Locality of the windowed local density of states

We introduce a generalization of local density of states which is "windowed" with respect to position and energy, called the windowed local density of states (wLDOS). This definition generalizes the usual LDOS in the sense that the usual LDOS is recovered in the limit where the position window captures individual sites and the energy window is a delta distribution. We prove that the wLDOS is local in the sense that it can be computed up to arbitrarily small error using spatial truncations of the system Hamiltonian. Using this result we prove that the wLDOS is well-defined and computable for infinite systems satisfying some natural assumptions. We finally present numerical computations of the wLDOS at the edge and in the bulk of a "Fibonacci SSH model", a one-dimensional non-periodic model with topological edge states.

math-ph↗

arXiv2020

The Iterated Projected Position Algorithm for Constructing Exponentially Localized Generalized Wannier Functions for Periodic and Non-Periodic Insulators in Two Dimensions and Higher

Localized bases play an important role in understanding electronic structure. In periodic insulators, a natural choice of localized basis is given by the Wannier functions which depend a choice of unitary transform known as a gauge transformation. Over the past few decades, there have been many works which have focused on optimizing the choice of gauge so that the corresponding Wannier functions are maximally localized or reflect some symmetry of the underlying system. In this work, we consider fully non-periodic materials where the usual Wannier functions are not well defined and gauge optimization is impossible. To tackle the problem of calculating exponentially localized generalized Wannier functions in both periodic and non-periodic system we discuss the "Iterated Projected Position (IPP)" algorithm. The IPP algorithm is based on matrix diagonalization and therefore unlike optimization based approaches it does not require initialization and cannot get stuck at a local minimum. Furthermore, the IPP algorithm is guaranteed by a rigorous analysis to produce exponentially localized functions under certain mild assumptions. We numerically demonstrate that the IPP algorithm can be used to calculate exponentially localized bases for the Haldane model, the Kane-Mele model (in both $\mathbb{Z}_2$ invariant even and $\mathbb{Z}_2$ invariant odd phases), and the $p_x + i p_y$ model on a quasi-crystal lattice.

math-ph↗

arXiv2020

Defect resonances of truncated crystal structures

Defects in the atomic structure of crystalline materials may spawn electronic bound states, known as \emph{defect states}, which decay rapidly away from the defect. Simplified models of defect states typically assume the defect is surrounded on all sides by an infinite perfectly crystalline material. In reality the surrounding structure must be finite, and in certain contexts the structure can be small enough that edge effects are significant. In this work we investigate these edge effects and prove the following result. Suppose that a one-dimensional infinite crystalline material hosting a positive energy defect state is truncated a distance $M$ from the defect. Then, for sufficiently large $M$, there exists a resonance \emph{exponentially close} (in $M$) to the bound state eigenvalue. It follows that the truncated structure hosts a metastable state with an exponentially long lifetime. Our methods allow both the resonance frequency and associated resonant state to be computed to all orders in $e^{-M}$. We expect this result to be of particular interest in the context of photonic crystals, where defect states are used for wave-guiding and structures are relatively small. Finally, under a mild additional assumption we prove that if the defect state has negative energy then the truncated structure hosts a bound state with exponentially-close energy.

math.AP↗

arXiv2020

Wave-packet propagation in a finite topological insulator and the spectral localizer index

We consider a model of electrons in a finite topological insulator. We numerically study the propagation of electronic wave-packets localized near edges of the structure in the presence of defects and random disorder. We compare the propagation with computations of the \emph{spectral localizer index}: a spatially local topological index. We find that without disorder, wave-packets propagate along boundaries between regions of differing spectral localizer index with minimal loss, even in the presence of strong defects. With disorder, wave-packets still propagate along boundaries between regions of differing localizer index, but lose significant mass as they propagate. We also find that with disorder, the \emph{localizer gap}, a measure of the localizer index "strength", is generally smaller away from the boundary than without disorder. Based on this result, we conjecture that wave-packets propagating along boundaries between regions of differing spectral localizer index do not lose significant mass whenever the localizer gap is sufficiently large on both sides of the boundary.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2019

Computing edge states without hard truncation

We present a numerical method which accurately computes the discrete spectrum and associated bound states of Hamiltonians which model electronic "edge" states localized at boundaries of one and two-dimensional crystalline materials. The problem is non-trivial since arbitrarily large finite "hard" truncations of the Hamiltonian in the infinite bulk direction tend to produce spurious bound states partially supported at the truncation. Our method, which overcomes this difficulty, is to compute the Green's function of the Hamiltonian by imposing an appropriate boundary condition in the bulk direction; then, the spectral data is recovered via Riesz projection. We demonstrate our method's effectiveness by studies of edge states at a graphene zig-zag edge in the presence of defects modeled both by a discrete tight-binding model and a continuum PDE model under finite difference discretization. Our method may also be used to study states localized at domain wall-type edges in one and two-dimensional materials where the edge Hamiltonian is infinite in both directions; we demonstrate this for the case of a tight-binding model of distinct honeycomb structures joined along a zig-zag edge.

physics.comp-ph↗

arXiv2019

Dirac operators and domain walls

We study the eigenvalue problem for a one-dimensional Dirac operator with a spatially varying ``mass'' term. It is well-known that when the mass function has the form of a kink, or \emph{domain wall}, transitioning between strictly positive and strictly negative asymptotic mass, $\pmκ_\infty$, at $\pm\infty$, the Dirac operator has a simple eigenvalue of zero energy (geometric multiplicity equal to one) within a gap in the continuous spectrum, with corresponding \emph{zero mode}, an exponentially localized eigenfunction. We prove that when the mass function has the form of \emph{two} domain walls separated by a sufficiently large distance $2 δ$, the Dirac operator has two real simple eigenvalues of opposite sign and of order $e^{- 2 |κ_\infty| δ}$. The associated eigenfunctions are, up to $L^2$ error of order $e^{- 2 |κ_\infty| δ}$, linear combinations of shifted copies of the single domain wall zero mode. For the case of three domain walls, there are two non-zero simple eigenvalues as above and a simple eigenvalue at energy zero. Our methods are based on a Lyapunov-Schmidt reduction strategy and we outline their natural extension to the case of $n$ domain walls for which the minimal distance between domain walls is sufficiently large. The class of Dirac operators we consider controls the bifurcation of topologically protected ``edge states'' from Dirac points (linear band crossings) for classes of Schrödinger operators with domain-wall modulated periodic potentials in one and two space dimensions. The present results may be used to construct a rich class of defect modes in periodic structures modulated by multiple domain walls.

math.AP↗

arXiv2018

Wavepackets in inhomogeneous periodic media: propagation through a one-dimensional band crossing

We consider a model of an electron in a crystal moving under the influence of an external electric field: Schroedinger's equation in one spatial dimension with a potential which is the sum of a periodic function $V$ and a smooth function $W$. We assume that the period of $V$ is much shorter than the scale of variation of $W$ and denote the ratio of these scales by $ε$. We consider the dynamics of $\textit{semiclassical wavepacket}$ asymptotic (in the limit $ε\downarrow 0$) solutions which are spectrally localized near to a $\textit{crossing}$ of two Bloch band dispersion functions of the periodic operator $- \frac{1}{2} \partial_z^2 + V(z)$. We show that the dynamics is qualitatively different from the case where bands are well-separated: at the time the wavepacket is incident on the band crossing, a second wavepacket is `excited' which has $\textit{opposite}$ group velocity to the incident wavepacket. We then show that our result is consistent with the solution of a `Landau-Zener'-type model.

math-ph↗

arXiv2016

Wavepackets in inhomogeneous periodic media: effective particle-field dynamics and Berry curvature

We consider a model of an electron in a crystal moving under the influence of an external electric field: Schrödinger's equation with a potential which is the sum of a periodic function and a general smooth function. We identify two dimensionless parameters: (re-scaled) Planck's constant and the ratio of the lattice spacing to the scale of variation of the external potential. We consider the special case where both parameters are equal and denote this parameter $ε$. In the limit $ε\downarrow 0$, we prove the existence of solutions known as semiclassical wavepackets which are asymptotic up to `Ehrenfest time' $t \sim \ln 1/ε$. To leading order, the center of mass and average quasi-momentum of these solutions evolve along trajectories generated by the classical Hamiltonian given by the sum of the Bloch band energy and the external potential. We then derive all corrections to the evolution of these observables proportional to $ε$. The corrections depend on the gauge-invariant Berry curvature of the Bloch band, and a coupling to the evolution of the wave-packet envelope which satisfies Schrödinger's equation with a time-dependent harmonic oscillator Hamiltonian. This infinite dimensional coupled `particle-field' system may be derived from an `extended' $ε$-dependent Hamiltonian. It is known that such coupling of observables (discrete particle-like degrees of freedom) to the wave-envelope (continuum field-like degrees of freedom) can have a significant impact on the overall dynamics.

math-ph↗