arXiv subjects

Ali G. Moghaddam

Publications and source records attributed to Ali G. Moghaddam.

At least 55 records · Page 3Linked to original sources

arXiv2019

Interplay of quenching temperature and drift in Brownian dynamics

We investigate the non-equilibrium evolution of ideal Brownian particles confined between two walls, following simultaneous quenches of the temperature and a constant external force. We compute (analytically and in numeric simulations) the post-quench dynamics of the density and the pressure exerted by the particles on the two walls perpendicular to the drift force. For identical walls, symmetry breaking associated with the drift gives rise to unequal particle densities and pressures on the two walls. While the pressure on one wall increases monotonically after the quench, on the other wall, depletion causes a non-monotonic dynamics with an overshooting at finite times, before the long-term steady-state value is reached. For walls immersed in a Brownian gas, the effective interaction force changes sign from repulsive at short times to attractive at late times. These findings have potential applications in various soft matter systems or fluids with charged Brownian particles, as well as carrier dynamics in semiconducting structures.

cond-mat.stat-mech↗

arXiv2018

Unveiling hidden charge density waves in single-layer NbSe$_2$ by impurities

We employ {\it{ab-initio}} calculations to investigate the charge density waves in single-layer NbSe$_2$, and we explore how they are affected by transition metal atoms. Our calculations reproduce the observed orthorhombic phase in single-layer NbSe$_2$ in the clean limit, establishing the energy order between three different distorted structures, two consisting of triangular Nb-Nb clusters and a third, energetically unfavoured, consisting of hexagonal Nb-Nb clusters. Such energy order, in agreement with known experimental work, is reversed by the adsorption of Co and Mn, which favour the formation of hexagonal Nb-Nb clusters; this CDW structure is indeed allowed from symmetry point of view but hidden in pure single layers because it is at a higher energy. The other adsorbates, K and Ga, still favour one of the triangular Nb-Nb cluster, while suppressing the other. We report how the energy difference between such distorted structure varies with these adsorbates. Furthermore, transition metals induce magnetism and favour the reduction of the symmetry of the charge density distribution.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2018

Anomalous quantum interference effects in graphene SNS junctions due to strain-induced gauge fields

We investigate the influence of gauge fields induced by strain on the supercurrent passing through the graphene-based Josephson junctions. We show in the presence of a constant pseudomagnetic field ${\bf B}_S$ originated from an arc-shape elastic deformation, the Josephson current is monotonically enhanced. This is in contrast with the oscillatory behavior of supercurrent (known as Fraunhofer pattern) caused by real magnetic fields passing through the junction. The absence of oscillatory supercurrent originates from the fact that strain-induced gauge fields have opposite directions at the two valleys due to the time-reversal symmetry. Subsequently there is no net Aharonov-Bohm effect due to ${\bf B}_S$ in the current carried by the bound states composed of electrons and holes from different valleys. On the other hand, when both magnetic and pseudomagnetic fields are present, Fraunhofer-like oscillations as function of the real magnetic field flux are found. We find that the Fraunhofer pattern and in particular its period slightly change by varying the strain-induced gauge field as well as the geometric aspect ratio of the junction. Intriguingly, the combination of two kinds of gauge fields results in two special fingerprint in the local current density profile: (i) strong localization of the Josephson current density with more intense maximum amplitudes; (ii) appearance of the inflated vortex cores - finite regions with almost diminishing Josephson currents - which their sizes increases by increasing ${\bf B}_S$. These findings reveal unexpected interference signatures of strain-induced gauge fields in graphene SNS junctions and provide unique tools for sensitive probing of the pseudomagnetic fields.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2018

Tailoring topological states in silicene using different halogen-passivated Si(111) substrates

We investigate the band structure and topological phases of silicene embedded on halogenated Si(111) surface, by virtue of density functional theory and tight-binding calculations.Our results show that the Dirac character of low energy excitations in silicene is almost preserved in the presence of silicon substrate passivated by various halogens. Nevertheless, the combined effects of charge transfer into the substrate, stretching of bonds between silicon atoms, and symmetry breaking which originates from van der Waals interaction, result in a gap $E_{g1}$ in the spectrum of the embedded silicene. We further take the spin-orbit interaction into account and obtain its strength and the resulting enhancement in the gap $E_{g2}=2λ$. Both $E_{g1}$ and $E_{g2}$ which contribute to the total gap, vary significantly when different halogen atoms are used for the passivation of the Si surface and for the case of iodine, they have very large values of $70$ and $23$ meV, respectively. To examine the topological properties, we calculate the projected band structure of silicene from which the tight binding parameters of the low-energy effective Hamiltonian are obtained by fitting. Our results based on Berry curvature and $\mathbb{Z}_2$ invariant reveals that silicene on halogenated Si substrates has a topological insulating state which can survive even at room temperature for the substrate with iodine and bromine at the surface. Similar to the free standing silicene, by applying a perpendicular electric field and at a certain critical value which again depends on the type of halogens, the gap closes and silicene undergoes a transition to a trivial insulating state. As a key finding, we see that the presence of halogenated substrate except for the case of fluorine enhances the robustness of the topological phases against the vertical electric field and most probably other external perturbations.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2016

Spin relaxation and the Kondo effect in transition metal dichalcogenide monolayers

We investigate the spin relaxation and Kondo resistivity caused by magnetic impurities in doped transition metal dichalcogenides monolayers. We show that momentum and spin relaxation times due to the exchange interaction by magnetic impurities, are much longer when the Fermi level is inside the spin split region of the valence band. In contrast to the spin relaxation, we find that the dependence of Kondo temperature $T_K$ on the doping is not strongly affected by the spin-orbit induced splitting, although only one of the spin species are present at each valley. This result, which is obtained using both perturbation theory and poor man's scaling methods, originates from the intervalley spin-flip scattering in the spin-split region. We further demonstrate the decline in the conductivity with temperatures close to $T_K$ which can vary with the doping. Our findings reveal the qualitative difference with the Kondo physics in conventional metallic systems and other Dirac materials.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2016

Superconducting electron and hole lenses

We show how a superconducting region (S) sandwiched between two normal leads (N), in the presence of barriers, can act as a lens for propagating electron and hole waves by virtue of the so- called crossed Andreev reflection (CAR). The CAR process which is equivalent to the Cooper pair splitting into the two N electrodes provides a unique possibility of constructing entangled electrons in solid state systems. When electrons are locally injected from an N lead, due to the CAR and normal reflection of quasiparticles by the insulating barriers at the interfaces, sequences of electron and hole focuses are established inside another N electrode. This behavior originates from the change of momentum during electron-hole conversion beside the successive normal reflections of electrons and holes due to the barriers. The focusing phenomena studied here is fundamentally different from the electron focusing in other systems like graphene pn junctions. In particular due to the electron-hole symmetry of superconducting state, the focusing of electrons and holes are robust against thermal excitations. Furthermore the effect of superconducting layer width, the injection point position, and barriers strength is investigated on the focusing behavior of the junction. Very intriguingly, it is shown that by varying the barriers strength, one can separately control the density of electrons or holes at the focuses.

cond-mat.supr-con↗

arXiv2015

Spin-dependent Seebeck effect and spin caloritronics in magnetic graphene

We investigate the spin-dependent thermoelectric effects in magnetic graphene in both diffusive and ballistic regimes. Employing the Boltzmann and Landauer formalisms we calculate the spin and charge Seebeck coefficients (thermopower) in magnetic graphene varying the spin splitting, temperature, and doping of the junction. It is found that while in normal graphene the temperature gradient drive a charge current, in the case of magnetic graphene a significant spin current is also established. In particular we show that in the undoped magnetic graphene in which different spin carriers belong to conduction and valence bands, a pure spin current is driven by the temperature gradient. In addition it is revealed that profound thermoelectric effects can be achieved at intermediate easily accessible temperatures when the thermal energy is comparable with Fermi energy $k_BT\lesssim μ$. By further investigation of the spin-dependent Seebeck effect and a significantly large figure of merit for spin thermopower $\mathcal{Z}_{\rm sp}T$, we suggest magnetic graphene as a promising material for spin-caloritronics studies and applications.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2015

Supercurrent reversal in Josephson junctions based on bilayer graphene flakes

We investigate the Josephson effect in a bilayer graphene flake contacted by two monolayer sheet deposited by superconducting electrodes. It is found that when the electrodes are attached to the different layers of the bilayer, the Josephson current is in a $π$ state when the bilayer region is undoped and in the absence of vertical bias. Applying doping or bias to the junction reveals $π-0$ transitions which can be controlled by varying the temperature and the junction length. The supercurrent reversal here is very different from the ferromagnetic Josephson junctions where the spin degree of freedom plays the key role. We argue that the scattering processes accompanied by layer and sublattice index change give rise to the scattering phases which their effect varies with doping and the bias. Such scattering phases are responsible for the $π-0$ transitions. On the other hand if both of the electrodes are coupled to the same layer of the flake or the flake has AA stacking instead of common AB, the junction will be always in $0$ state since layer or sublattice index is not changed.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2014

Optical responses and optical activity of ultrathin films of topological insulator

We investigate the optical properties of an ultrathin film of a topological insulator in the presence of an in-plane magnetic field. We show that due to the combination of the overlap between the surface states of the two layers and the magnetic field, the optical conductivity can show strong anisotropy. This leads to the effective optical activity of the ultrathin film by influencing the circularly polarized incident light. Intriguingly, for a range of magnetic fields, the reflected and transmitted lights exhibit elliptic character. Even for certain values almost linear polarizations are obtained, indicating that the thin film can act as a polaroid in reflection. All these features are discussed in the context of the time reversal symmetry breaking as one of key ingredients for the optical activity.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2014

Gate controllable spin pumping in graphene via rotating magnetization

We investigate pure spin pumping in graphene by imposing a ferromagnet (F) with rotating magnetization on top of it. Using the generalized scattering approach for adiabatic spin pumping, we obtain the spin current pumped through magnetic graphene to a neighboring normal (N) region. The spin current can be easily controlled by gate voltages and under certain conditions, becomes sufficiently large to be measurable in current experimental setups. In fact it reaches a maximum value when one of the spins are completely filtered due to the vanishing density of states of the corresponding spin species in the ferromagnetic part. Considering an N|F|N structure with a finite ferromagnetic region, it is found that in contrast to the metallic ferromagnetic materials the transverse spin coherence length can be comparable to the length of F denoted by $L$. Subsequently, due to the quantum interferences, the spin current becomes oscillatory function of $JL/\hbar v_F$ in which $J$ is the spin splitting inside F. Finally we show, originated from the controllability of pumped spin into two different normal sides, a profound spin battery effect can be seen in the hybrid N|F|N device.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2014

Gate-controlled supercurrent reversal in MoS$_2$-based Josephson junctions

Motivated by recent experiments revealing superconductivity in MoS$_2$, we investigate the Josephson effect in the monolayer MoS$_2$ at the presence of an exchange splitting. We show that the supercurrent reversal known as $0-π$ transition can occur by varying the doping via gate voltages. This is in contrast to common superconductor/ferromagnet/superconductor junctions in which successive $0-π$ transition take place with the variation of junction length or temperature. In fact for the case of MoS$_2$ we find that both the amplitude and the period of oscillations show a dependence on the doping which explains the predicted doping induced supercurrent reversal. These effects comes from the dependence of density and Fermi velocity on the doping strength beside the intrinsic spin splitting in the valence band which originates from spin-orbit interaction.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2013

Effective lattice Hamiltonian for monolayer MoS2 : Tailoring electronic structure with perpendicular electric and magnetic fields

We propose an effective lattice Hamiltonian for monolayer MoS$_2$ in order to describe the low-energy band structure and investigate the effect of perpendicular electric and magnetic fields on its electronic structure. We derive a tight-binding model based on the hybridization of the $d$ orbitals of molybdenum and $p$ orbitals of sulfur atoms and then introduce a modified two-band continuum model of monolayer MoS$_2$ by exploiting the quasi-degenerate partitioning method. Our theory proves that the low-energy excitations of the system are no longer massive Dirac fermions. It reveals a difference between electron and hole masses and provides trigonal warping effects. Furthermore, we predict a valley degeneracy breaking effect in the Landau levels. Besides, we also show that applying a gate voltage perpendicular to the monolayer modifies the electronic structure including the band gap and effective masses.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2013

Josephson-Majorana cycle in topological single-electron hybrid transistors

Charge transport through a small topological superconducting island in contact with a normal and a superconducting electrode occurs through a cycle that involves coherent oscillations of Cooper pairs and tunneling in/out the normal electrode through a Majorana bound state, the Josephson-Majorana cycle. We illustrate this mechanism by studying the current-voltage characteristics of a superconductor-topological superconductor-normal metal single-electron transistor. At low bias and temperature the Josephson-Majorana cycle is the dominant mechanism for transport. We discuss a three-terminal configuration where the non-local character of the Majorana bound states is emergent.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2012

Driven superconducting proximity effect in interacting quantum dots

We present a theory of non-equilibrium superconducting proximity effect in an interacting quantum dot induced by a time-dependent tunnel coupling between dot and a superconducting lead. The proximity effect, that is established when the driving frequency fulfills a gate-voltage-dependent resonance condition, can be probed through the tunneling current into a weakly-coupled normal lead. Furthermore, we propose to generate and manipulate coherent superpositions of quantum-dot states with electron numbers differing by two, by applying pulsed oscillatory variations to the couplings between dot and superconductors.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2010

Graphene-based electronic spin lenses

We theoretically demonstrate the capability of a ferromagnetic-normal (FN) interface in graphene to focus an electron-wave with a certain spin direction. The essential feature is the negative refraction Klein tunneling, which is spin-resolved when the exchange energy of F graphene exceeds its Fermi energy. Exploiting this property, we propose a graphene NFN electronic spin lens through which an unpolarized electronic beam can be collimated with a finite spin-polarization. Our study reveals that magnetic graphene has the potential to be the electronic counterpart of the recently discovered photonic chiral meta-materials that exhibit a negative refractive index for only one direction of the circular polarization of the photon-wave.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2008

Graphene based superconducting quantum point contacts

We investigate the Josephson effect in the graphene nanoribbons of length $L$ smaller than the superconducting coherence length and an arbitrary width $W$. We find that in contrast to an ordinary superconducting quantum point contact (SQPC) the critical supercurrent $I_c$ is not quantized for the nanoribbons with smooth and armchair edges. For a low concentration of the carriers $I_c$ decreases monotonically with lowering $W/L$ and tends to a constant minimum for a narrow nanoribbon with $W\lesssim L$. The minimum $I_c$ is zero for the smooth edges but $eΔ_{0}/\hbar$ for the armchair edges. At higher concentrations of the carriers this monotonic variation acquires a series of peaks. Further analysis of the current-phase relation and the Josephson coupling strength $I_cR_N$ in terms of $W/L$ and the concentration of carriers revels significant differences with those of an ordinary SQPC. On the other hand for a zigzag nanoribbon we find that, similar to an ordinary SQPC, $I_c$ is quantized but to the half-integer values $(n+1/2)4eΔ_{0}/\hbar$.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2008

Long range Josephson coupling through ferromagnetic graphene

We study the Josephson effect in graphene-based ballistic superconductor-ferromagnet-superconductor (SFS) junctions. We find an oscillatory Josephson coupling $I_c R_N$ of F graphene whose amplitude is nonvanishing for a half-metallic graphene, increases for the exchange fields $h$ above the Fermi energy $E_{F}$ and shows only a slow damping at strong exchange fields $h\gg E_{F}$. We interpret this long range Josephson coupling as the result of the exchange mediated Andreev-Klein process at FS interfaces which enhances the induced antiparallel-spin superconducting correlations in F graphene by increasing $h$ above $E_{F}$. We further demonstrate the existence of regular temperature induced transitions between 0 and $π$ couplings in the plane of $T$ and $h$ where the phase boundaries have distinct shapes at the two regimes of $h$ below and above $E_{F}$.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2008

Andreev-Klein reflection in graphene ferromagnet-superconductor junctions

We show that Andreev reflection in a junction between ferromagnetic (F) and superconducting (S) graphene regions is fundamentally different from the common FS junctions. For a weakly doped F graphene with an exchange field $h$ larger than its Fermi energy $E_{\rm F}$, Andreev reflection of massless Dirac fermions is associated with a Klein tunneling through an exchange field p-n barrier between two spin-split conduction and valence subbands. We find that this Andreev-Klein process results in an enhancement of the subgap conductance of a graphene FS junction by $h$ up to the point at which the conductance at low voltages $eV\ll Δ$ is greater than its value for the corresponding non-ferromagnetic junction. We also demonstrate that the Andreev reflection can be of retro or specular types in both convergent and divergent ways with the reflection direction aligned, respectively, closer to and farther from the normal to the junction as compared to the incidence direction.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗