arXiv subjects

Eric J. Heller

Publications and source records attributed to Eric J. Heller.

At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv2022

Bragg scattering from a random potential

A potential for propagation of a wave in two dimensions is constructed from a random superposition of plane waves around all propagation angles. Surprisingly, despite the lack of periodic structure, sharp Bragg diffraction of the wave is observed, analogous to a powder diffraction pattern. The scattering is partially resonant, so Fermi's golden rule does not apply. This phenomenon would be experimentally observable by sending an atomic beam into a chaotic cavity populated by a single mode laser.

cond-mat.dis-nn↗

arXiv2021

From Branched Flow to Superwires in Periodic Potentials

We report unexpected classical and quantum dynamics of a wave propagating in a periodic potential in high Brilloiun zones. Branched flow appears at wavelengths shorter than the typical length scale of the ordered periodic structure and for energies above the potential barrier. The strongest branches remain stable indefinitely and may create linear dynamical channels, wherein waves are not confined directly by potential walls as electrons in ordinary wires, but rather indirectly and more subtly by dynamical stability. We term these superwires, since they are associated with a superlattice.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2020

A formally exact master equation for open quantum systems

We present a succinct and intuitive derivation of a formally exact master equation for general open quantum systems, without the use of an "inverse" map which was invoked in previous works on formally exact master equations. This formalism is applicable to non-Markovian regimes. We derive a second-order equation of motion for the illustrative spin-boson model at arbitrary temperatures, observing non-exponential decoherence and relaxation. Limiting our generic derivation to zero temperature, we also reproduce the result for the special case of a vacuum bath in Phys. Rev. A 81, 042103 (2010).

quant-ph↗

arXiv2018

Classical approach to collision complexes in ultracold chemical reactions

Inspired by Wannier's threshold law, we recognize that collision complex decay meets the requirements of quantum-classical correspondence in sufficiently exothermic ultracold reactions. We make use of this correspondence to elucidate the classical foundations of ultracold reactions and to help bring calculations currently beyond the capabilities of quantum mechanics within reach. A classical method with a simplified model of many-body interactions is provided for determination of the collision complex lifetime and demonstrated for a reduced-dimensional system, as preliminary to the calculation of collision complex lifetimes in the full-dimensional system.

physics.chem-ph↗

arXiv2018

Dust and gas emission from cometary nuclei: the case of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko

Comets display with decreasing solar distance an increased emission of gas and dust particles, leading to the formation of the coma and tail. Spacecraft missions provide insight in the temporal and spatial variations of the dust and gas sources located on the cometary nucleus. For the case of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko (67P/C-G), the long-term observations from the Rosetta mission point to a homogeneous dust emission across the entire illuminated surface. Despite the homogeneous initial distribution, a collimation in jet-like structures becomes visible. We propose that this observation is linked directly to the complex shape of the nucleus and projects concave topographical features into the dust coma. To test this hypothesis, we put forward a gas-dust description of 67P/C-G, where gravitational and gas forces are accurately determined from the surface mesh and the rotation of the nucleus is fully incorporated. The emerging jet-like structures persist for a wide range of gas-dust interactions and show a dust velocity dependent bending.

astro-ph.EP↗

arXiv2017

Graphene Terahertz Absorption

The unique terahertz properties of graphene has been identified for novel optoelectronic applications. In a graphene sample with bias voltage added, there is an enhanced absorption in the far infrared region and a diminished absorption in the infrared region. The strength of enhancement(diminishment) increases with the gate voltage, and the enhancement compensates the diminishment. We find that it is the coherence length of electrons in graphene that allows pure electronic transitions between states differing by small momentums and makes intraband transition possible, is responsible for the far infrared enhancement. Phonon assisted processes are not necessary and would not in any case contribute to a sum rule. This naturally leads to results obeying the general sum-rule in optical absorptions. Our prediction of the strength of enhancement(diminishment) in terms of the bias agrees with experiments. This is the first direct calculation we are aware of, since the prior phonon assisted model for indirect transition should not obey a sum rule.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2017

Reassessing Graphene Absorption and Emission Spectroscopy

We present a new paradigm for understanding optical absorption and hot electron dynamics experiments in graphene. Our analysis pivots on assigning proper importance to phonon assisted indirect processes and bleaching of direct processes. We show indirect processes figure in the excess absorption in the UV region. Experiments which were thought to indicate ultrafast relaxation of electrons and holes, reaching a thermal distribution from an extremely non-thermal one in under 5-10 fs, instead are explained by the nascent electron and hole distributions produced by indirect transitions. These need no relaxation or ad-hoc energy removal to agree with the observed emission spectra and fast pulsed absorption spectra. The fast emission following pulsed absorption is dominated by phonon assisted processes, which vastly outnumber direct ones and are always available, connecting any electron with any hole any time. Calculations are given, including explicitly calculating the magnitude of indirect processes, supporting these views.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2017

Periodic Orbit Scar in Propagation of Wavepacket

This study analyzed the scar-like localization in the time-average of a timeevolving wavepacket on the desymmetrized stadium billiard. When a wavepacket is launched along the orbits, it emerges on classical unstable periodic orbits as a scar in the stationary states. This localization along the periodic orbit is clarified through the semiclassical approximation. It essentially originates from the same mechanism of a scar in stationary states: the piling up of the contribution from the classical actions of multiply repeated passes on a primitive periodic orbit. To create this enhancement, several states are required in the energy range, which is determined by the initial wavepacket.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2017

Characterizing time-irreversibility in disordered fermionic systems by the effect of local perturbations

We study the effects of local perturbations on the dynamics of disordered fermionic systems in order to characterize time-irreversibility. We focus on three different systems, the non-interacting Anderson and Aubry-André-Harper (AAH-) models, and the interacting spinless disordered t-V chain. First, we consider the effect on the full many-body wave-functions by measuring the Loschmidt echo (LE). We show that in the extended/ergodic phase the LE decays exponentially fast with time, while in the localized phase the decay is algebraic. We demonstrate that the exponent of the decay of the LE in the localized phase diverges proportionally to the single-particle localization length as we approach the metal-insulator transition in the AAH model. Second, we probe different phases of disordered systems by studying the time expectation value of local observables evolved with two Hamiltonians that differ by a spatially local perturbation. Remarkably, we find that many-body localized systems could lose memory of the initial state in the long-time limit, in contrast to the non-interacting localized phase where some memory is always preserved.

cond-mat.dis-nn↗

arXiv2016

Strong quantum scarring by local impurities

We discover and characterize strong quantum scars, or eigenstates resembling classical periodic orbits, in two-dimensional quantum wells perturbed by local impurities. These scars are not explained by ordinary scar theory, which would require the existence of short, moderately unstable periodic orbits in the perturbed system. Instead, they are supported by classical resonances in the unperturbed system and the resulting quantum near-degeneracy. Even in the case of a large number of randomly scattered impurities, the scars prefer distinct orientations that extremize the overlap with the impurities. We demonstrate that these preferred orientations can be used for highly efficient transport of quantum wave packets across the perturbed potential landscape. Assisted by the scars, wave-packet recurrences are significantly stronger than in the unperturbed system. Together with the controllability of the preferred orientations, this property may be very useful for quantum transport applications.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2015

Theory of Graphene Raman Spectroscopy

Raman spectroscopy plays a key role in studies of graphene and related carbon systems. Graphene is perhaps the most promising material of recent times for many novel applications, including electronics. In this paper, the traditional and well established Kramers-Heisenberg-Dirac (KHD) Raman scattering theory (1925-1927) is extended to crystalline graphene for the first time. It demands different phonon production mechanisms and phonon energies than does the popular "double resonance" Raman scattering model. The latter has never been compared to KHD. Within KHD, phonons are produced instantly along with electrons and holes, in what we term an electron-hole-phonon triplet, which does not suffer Pauli blocking. A new mechanism for double phonon production we name "transition sliding" explains the brightness of the 2D mode and other overtones, as a result of linear (Dirac cone) electron dispersion. Direct evidence for sliding resides in hole doping experiments performed in 2011 \cite{chenCrommie}. Whole ranges of electronic transitions are permitted and may even constructively interfere for the same laser energy and phonon q, explaining the dispersion, bandwidth, and strength of many two phonon Raman bands. Graphene's entire Raman spectrum, including dispersive and fixed bands, missing bands not forbidden by symmetries, weak bands, overtone bands, Stokes anti-Stokes anomalies, individual bandwidths, trends with doping, and D-2D band spacing anomalies emerge naturally and directly in KHD theory.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2014

The Polyacetylene Raman Spectrum, Decoded

More than 30 years ago, polyacetylene was very much in the limelight, an early example of a conducting polymer and source of many unusual spectroscopic features spawning disparate ideas as to their origin. Several versions of the polyacetylene spectrum story emerged, with contradictory conclusions. In this paper both ordinary and peculiar polyacetylene spectral features are explained in terms of standard (if disused) spectroscopic concepts, including the dependence of electronic transition moments on phonon coordinates, Born-Oppenheimer energy surface properties, and (much more familiarly) electron and phonon band structure. Raman sideband dispersion and line shapes are very well matched by theory in a fundamental way. Most importantly, clear ramifications emerge for the Raman spectroscopy of a wide range of extended systems, including graphene and beyond, suggesting changes to some common practice in condensed matter spectroscopy.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2014

Shaping Electromagnetic Fields

The ability to control electromagnetic fields on the subwavelength scale could open exciting new venues in many fields of science. Transformation optics provides one way to attain such control through the local variation of the permittivity and permeability of a material. Here, we demonstrate another way to shape electromagnetic fields, taking advantage of the enormous size of the configuration space in combinatorial problems and the resonant scattering properties of metallic nanoparticles. Our design does not require the engineering of a material's electromagnetic properties and has relevance to the design of more flexible platforms for probing light-matter interaction and many body physics.

physics.optics↗

arXiv2014

Multiple Scattering and Plasmon Resonance in the Intermediate Regime

The collective excitation of the conduction electrons in subwavelength structures gives rise to the Localized Surface Plasmon(LSP). The system consisting of two such LSPs, known as the dimer system,is of fundamental interest and is being actively investigated in the literature. Three regimes have been previously identified and they are the photonic regime, the strong coupling regime and the quantum tunneling regime. In this Letter, we propose a new regime for this intriguing systems, the intermediate regime. In this new regime, the quasistatic approximation, which is widely used to study such LSP systems, fails to capture the main physics: the multiple scattering of the electromagnetic waves between the two LSPs, which significantly modifies the properties of the resonant modes in the system. This intermediate regime provides a new route to explore in plasmonics, where controlling both the excited plasmon modes and the damping rates are of paramount significance.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2013

Stability of Branched Flow from a Quantum Point Contact

In classically chaotic systems, small differences in initial conditions are exponentially magnified over time. However, it was observed experimentally that the (necessarily quantum) "branched flow" pattern of electron flux from a quantum point contact (QPC) traveling over a random background potential in two-dimensional electron gases(2DEGs) remains substantially invariant to large changes in initial conditions. Since such a potential is classically chaotic and unstable to changes in initial conditions, it was conjectured that the origin of the observed stability is purely quantum mechanical, with no classical analog. In this paper, we show that the observed stability is a result of the physics of the QPC and the nature of the experiment. We show that the same stability can indeed be reproduced classically, or quantum mechanically. In addition, we explore the stability of the branched flow with regards to changes in the eigenmodes of quantum point contact.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2013

Transport in Graphene: Ballistic or Diffusive?

We investigate the transport of electrons in disordered and pristine graphene devices. Fano shot noise, a standard metric to assess the mechanism for electronic transport in mesoscopic devices, has been shown to produce almost the same magnitude ($\approx 1/3$) in ballistic and diffusive graphene devices and is therefore of limited applicability. We consider a two-terminal geometry where the graphene flake is contacted by narrow metallic leads. We propose that the dependence of the conductance on the position of one of the leads, a conductance profile, can give us insight into the charge flow, which can in turn be used to analyze the transport mechanism. Moreover, we simulate scanning probe microscopy (SPM) measurements for the same devices, which can visualize the flow of charge inside the device, thus complementing the transport calculations. From our simulations, we find that both the conductance profile and SPM measurements are excellent tools to assess the transport mechanism differentiating ballistic and diffusive graphene systems.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2013

Fractal Dynamics in Chaotic Quantum Transport

Despite several experiments on chaotic quantum transport in two-dimensional systems such as semiconductor quantum dots, corresponding quantum simulations within a real-space model have been out of reach so far. Here we carry out quantum transport calculations in real space and real time for a two-dimensional stadium cavity that shows chaotic dynamics. By applying a large set of magnetic fields we obtain a complete picture of magnetoconductance that indicates fractal scaling. In the calculations of the fractality we use detrended fluctuation analysis -- a widely used method in time series analysis -- and show its usefulness in the interpretation of the conductance curves. Comparison with a standard method to extract the fractal dimension leads to consistent results that, in turn, qualitatively agree with the previous experimental data.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2013

Quantum Flux and Reverse Engineering of Quantum Wavefunctions

An interpretation of the probability flux is given, based on a derivation of its eigenstates and relating them to coherent state projections on a quantum wavefunction. An extended definition of the flux operator is obtained using coherent states. We present a "processed Husimi" representation, which makes decisions using many Husimi projections at each location. The processed Husimi representation reverse engineers or deconstructs the wavefunction, yielding the underlying classical ray structure. Our approach makes possible interpreting the dynamics of systems where the probability flux is uniformly zero or strongly misleading. The new technique is demonstrated by the calculation of particle flow maps of the classical dynamics underlying a quantum wavefunction.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗