arXiv subjects

David Carpentier

Publications and source records attributed to David Carpentier.

At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv2015

Construction and properties of a topological index for periodically driven time-reversal invariant 2D crystals

We present mathematical details of the construction of a topological invariant for periodically driven two-dimensional lattice systems with time-reversal symmetry and quasienergy gaps, which was proposed recently by some of us. The invariant is represented by a gap-dependent $\,\mathbb Z_2$-valued index that is simply related to the Kane-Mele invariants of quasienergy bands but contains an extra information. As a byproduct, we prove new expressions for the two-dimensional Kane-Mele invariant relating the latter to Wess-Zumino amplitudes and the boundary gauge anomaly.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2015

Topological index for periodically driven time-reversal invariant 2D systems

We define a new $Z_2$-valued index to characterize the topological properties of periodically driven two dimensional crystals when the time-reversal symmetry is enforced. This index is associated with a spectral gap of the evolution operator over one period of time. When two such gaps are present, the Kane-Mele index of the eigenstates with eigenvalues between the gaps is recovered as the difference of the gap indices. This leads to an expression for the Kane-Mele invariant in terms of the Wess-Zumino amplitude. We illustrate the relation of the new index to the edge states in finite geometries by numerically solving an explicit model on the square lattice that is periodically driven in a time-reversal invariant way.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2015

Minimal conductivity, topological Berry winding and duality in three-band semimetals

The physics of massless relativistic quantum particles has recently arisen in the electronic properties of solids following the discovery of graphene. Around the accidental crossing of two energy bands, the electronic excitations are described by a Weyl equation initially derived for ultra-relativistic particles. Similar three and four band semimetals have recently been discovered in two and three dimensions. Among the remarkable features of graphene are the characterization of the band crossings by a topological Berry winding, leading to an anomalous quantum Hall effect, and a finite minimal conductivity at the band crossing while the electronic density vanishes. Here we show that these two properties are intimately related: this result paves the way to a direct measure of the topological nature of a semi-metal. By considering three band semimetals with a flat band in two dimensions, we find that only few of them support a topological Berry phase. The same semimetals are the only ones displaying a non vanishing minimal conductivity at the band crossing. The existence of both a minimal conductivity and a topological robustness originates from properties of the underlying lattice, which are encoded not by a symmetry of their Bloch Hamiltonian, but by a duality.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2014

Topology of Bands in Solids : From Insulators to Dirac Matter

Bloch theory describes the electronic states in crystals whose energies are distributed as bands over the Brillouin zone. The electronic states corresponding to a (few) isolated energy band(s) thus constitute a vector bundle. The topological properties of these vector bundles provide new characteristics of the corresponding electronic phases. We review some of these properties in the case of (topological) insulators and semi-metals.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2014

Parallel Transport and Band Theory in Crystals

We show that different conventions for Bloch Hamiltonians on non-Bravais lattices correspond to different natural definitions of parallel transport of Bloch eigenstates. Generically the Berry curvatures associated with these parallel transports differ, while physical quantities are naturally related to a canonical choice of the parallel transport.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2013

An Introduction to Topological Insulators

Electronic bands in crystals are described by an ensemble of Bloch wave functions indexed by momenta defined in the first Brillouin Zone, and their associated energies. In an insulator, an energy gap around the chemical potential separates valence bands from conduction bands. The ensemble of valence bands is then a well defined object, which can possess non-trivial or twisted topological properties. In the case of a twisted topology, the insulator is called a topological insulator. We introduce this notion of topological order in insulators as an obstruction to define the Bloch wave functions over the whole Brillouin Zone using a single phase convention. Several simple historical models displaying a topological order in dimension two are considered. Various expressions of the corresponding topological index are finally discussed.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2013

Effect of disorder on 2D topological merging transition from a Dirac semi-metal to a normal insulator

We study the influence of disorder on the topological transition from a two-dimensional Dirac semi-metal to an insulating state. This transition is described as a continuous merging of two Dirac points leading to a semi-Dirac spectrum at the critical point. The latter is characterized by a dispersion relation linear in one direction and quadratic in the orthogonal one. Using the self-consistent Born approximation and renormalization group we calculate the density of states above, below and in the vicinity of the transition in the presence of different types of disorder. Beyond the expected disorder smearing of the transition we find an intermediate disordered semi-Dirac phase. On one side this phase is separated from the insulating state by a continuous transition while on the other side it evolves through a crossover to the disordered Dirac phase.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2013

Topological surface states of strained Mercury-Telluride probed by ARPES

The topological surface states of strained HgTe have been measured using high-resolution ARPES measurements. The dispersion of surface states form a Dirac cone, which origin is close to the top of the \ghh band: the top half of the Dirac cone is inside the stress-gap while the bottom half lies within the heavy hole bands and keeps a linear dispersion all the way to the X-point. The circular dichroism of the photo-emitted electron intensity has also been measured for all the bands.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2013

Magnetic dephasing in mesoscopic spin glasses

We have measured Universal Conductance Fluctuations in the metallic spin glass Ag:Mn as a function of temperature and magnetic field. From this measurement, we can access the phase coherence time of the electrons in the spin glass. We show that this phase coherence time increases with both the inverse of the temperature and the magnetic field. From this we deduce that decoherence mechanisms are still active even deep in the spin glass phase.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2012

Graphene-based heterojunction between two topological insulators

Quantum Hall (QH) and quantum spin Hall (QSH) phases have very different edge states and, when going from one phase to the other, the direction of one edge state must be reversed. We study this phenomena in graphene in presence of a strong perpendicular magnetic field on top of a spin-orbit (SO) induced QSH phase. We show that, below the SO gap, the QSH phase is virtually unaffected by the presence of the magnetic field. Above the SO gap, the QH phase is restored. An electrostatic gate placed on top of the system allows to create a QSH-QH junction which is characterized by the existence of a spin-polarized chiral state, propagating along the topological interface. We find that such a setup naturally provides an extremely sensitive spin-polarized current switch.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2012

Tunable thermopower in a graphene-based topological insulator

Following the recent proposal by Weeks et al., which suggested that indium (or thallium) adatoms deposited on the surface of graphene should turn the latter into a quantum spin Hall (QSH) insulator characterized by a sizeable gap, we perform a systematic study of the transport properties of this system as a function of the density of randomly distributed adatoms. While the samples are, by construction, very disordered, we find that they exhibit an extremely stable QSH phase with no signature of the spatial inhomogeneities of the adatom configuration. We find that a simple rescaling of the spin-orbit coupling parameter allows us to account for the behaviour of the inhomogeneous system using a homogeneous model. This robustness opens the route to a much easier experimental realization of this topological insulator. We additionally find this material to be a very promising candidate for thermopower generation with a target temperature tunable from 1 to 80K and an efficiency ZT close to 1.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2012

Diffusion at the Surface of Topological Insulators

We consider the transport properties of topological insulators surface states in the presence of uncorrelated point-like disorder, both in the classical and quantum regimes. The transport properties of those two-dimensional surface states depend strongly on the amplitude of the hexagonal warping of their Fermi surface. It is shown that a perturbative analysis of the warping fails to describe the transport in experimentally available topological insulators, such as Bi2Se3 and Bi2Te3. Hence we develop a fully non-perturbative description of these effects. In particular, we find that the dependence of the warping amplitude on the Fermi energy manifests itself in a strong dependence of the diffusion constant on this Fermi energy, leading to several important experimental consequences. Moreover, the combination of a strong warping with an in plane Zeeman effect leads to an attenuation of conductance fluctuations in contrast to the situation of unwarped Dirac surface states.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2012

Topological Weyl Semi-metal from a Lattice Model

We define and study a three dimensional lattice model which displays a Weyl semi-metallic phase. This model consists of coupled layers of quantum (anomalous) Hall insulators. The Weyl semi-metallic phase appears between a resulting quantum Hall insulating phase and a normal insulating phase. Weyl fermions in this Weyl semi-metal, similar to Dirac fermions in graphene, have their lattice pseudo-spin locked to their momenta. We investigate surface states and Fermi arcs, and their evolution for different phases, by exactly diagonalizing the lattice model as well as by analyzing their topological origins.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2012

Cross-Over between universality classes in a magnetically disordered metallic wire

In this article we present numerical results of conduction in a disordered quasi-1D wire in the possible presence of magnetic impurities. Our analysis leads us to the study of universal properties in different conduction regimes such as the localized and metallic ones. In particular, we analyse the cross-over between universality classes occurring when the strength of magnetic disorder is increased. For this purpose, we use a numerical Landauer approach, and derive the scattering matrix of the wire from electron's Green's function.

cond-mat.dis-nn↗

arXiv2011

Two dimensional Dirac fermions in the presence of long-range correlated disorder

We consider 2D Dirac fermions in the presence of three types of disorder: random scalar potential, random gauge potential and random mass with long-range correlations decaying as a power law. Using various methods such as the self-consistent Born approximation (SCBA), renormalization group (RG), the matrix Green function formalism and bosonisation we calculate the density of states and study the full counting statistics of fermionic transport at lower energy. The SCBA and RG show that the random correlated scalar potentials generate an algebraically small energy scale below which the density of states saturates to a constant value. For correlated random gauge potential, RG and bosonisation calculations provide consistent behavior of the density of states which diverges at zero energy in an integrable way. In the case of correlated random mass disorder the RG flow has a nontrivial infrared stable fixed point leading to a universal power-law behavior of the density of states and also to universal transport properties. In contrast to uncorrelated case the correlated scalar potential and random mass disorders give rise to deviation from the pseudodiffusive transport already to lowest order in disorder strength.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2010

Remanence effects in the electrical resistivity of spin glasses

We have measured the low temperature electrical resistivity of Ag : Mn mesoscopic spin glasses prepared by ion implantation with a concentration of 700 ppm. As expected, we observe a clear maximum in the resistivity (T ) at a temperature in good agreement with theoretical predictions. Moreover, we observe remanence effects at very weak magnetic fields for the resistivity below the freezing temperature Tsg: upon Field Cooling (fc), we observe clear deviations of (T ) as compared with the Zero Field Cooling (zfc); such deviations appear even for very small magnetic fields, typically in the Gauss range. This onset of remanence for very weak magnetic fields is reminiscent of the typical signature on magnetic susceptibility measurements of the spin glass transition for this generic glassy system.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2010

Non-linear sigma model study of magnetic dephasing in a mesoscopic spin glass

We propose a nonlinear sigma model for the description of quantum transport in a mesoscopic metallic conductor with magnetic impurities frozen in a spin glass phase. It accounts for the presence of both the corresponding scalar and magnetic random potentials. In a spin glass, this magnetic random potential is correlated between different realizations. As the strength of the magnetic potential is varied, this model describes the crossover between orthogonal and unitary universality classes of the nonlinear sigma model. We apply this technique to the calculations of the correlation of conductance between two frozen spin configurations in terms of dephasing rates for the usual low energy modes of weak localization theory.

cond-mat.dis-nn↗

arXiv2009

Universal metallic and insulating properties of one dimensional Anderson Localization : a numerical Landauer study

We present results on the Anderson localization in a quasi one-dimensional metallic wire in the presence of magnetic impurities. We focus within the same numerical analysis on both the universal localized and metallic regimes, and we study the evolution of these universal properties as the strength of the magnetic disorder is varied. For this purpose, we use a numerical Landauer approach, and derive the scattering matrix of the wire from electron's Green's function obtained from a recursive algorithm.

cond-mat.dis-nn↗