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F. S. Nogueira

Publications and source records attributed to F. S. Nogueira.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources
arXiv2020

Temperature and Chemical Potential Dependence of the Parity Anomaly in Quantum Anomalous Hall Insulators

The low-energy physics of two-dimensional Quantum Anomalous Hall insulators like (Hg,Mn)Te quantum wells or magnetically doped (Bi,Sb)Te thin films can be effectively described by two Chern insulators, including a Dirac, as well as a momentum-dependent mass term. Each of those Chern insulators is directly related to the parity anomaly of planar quantum electrodynamics. In this work, we analyze the finite temperature Hall conductivity of a single Chern insulator in 2+1 space-time dimensions under the influence of a chemical potential and an out-of-plane magnetic field. At zero magnetic field, this non-dissipative transport coefficient originates from the parity anomaly of planar quantum electrodynamics. We show that the parity anomaly itself is not renormalized by finite temperature effects. However, it induces two terms of different physical origin in the effective action of a Chern insulator, which is proportional to the Hall conductivity. The first term is temperature and chemical potential independent, and solely encodes the intrinsic topological response. The second term specifies the non-topological thermal response of conduction and valence band states. In particular, we show that the relativistic mass of a Chern insulator counteracts finite temperature effects, whereas its non-relativistic mass enhances these corrections. Moreover, we extend our analysis to finite magnetic fields and relate the thermal response of a Chern insulator therein to the spectral asymmetry, which is a measure of the parity anomaly in orbital fields.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗
arXiv2020

Magnetic monopoles and superinsulation in Josephson junction arrays

Electric-magnetic duality or S-duality, extending the symmetry of Maxwell's equations by including the symmetry between Noether electric charges and topological magnetic monopoles, is one of the most fundamental concepts of modern physics. In two-dimensional systems harboring Cooper pairs, S-duality manifests in the emergence of superinsulation, a state dual to superconductivity, which exhibits an infinite resistance at finite temperatures. The mechanism behind this infinite resistance is the linear charge confinement by a magnetic monopole plasma. This plasma constricts electric field lines connecting the charge-anti-charge pairs into electric strings, in analogy to quarks within hadrons. Yet the origin of the monopole plasma remains an open question. Here we consider a two-dimensional Josephson junction array (JJA) and reveal that the magnetic monopole plasma arises as quantum instantons, thus establishing the underlying mechanism of superinsulation as two-dimensional quantum tunneling events. We calculate the string tension and the dimension of an electric pion determining the minimal size of a system capable of hosting superinsulation. Our findings pave the way for study of fundamental S-duality in desktop experiments on JJA and superconducting films.

cond-mat.str-el↗
arXiv2019

The "glass transition'' as a topological defect driven transition in a distribution of crystals and a prediction of a universal viscosity collapse

Topological defects are typically quantified relative to ordered backgrounds. The importance of these defects to the understanding of physical phenomena including diverse equilibrium melting transitions from low temperature ordered to higher temperatures disordered systems (and vice versa) can hardly be overstated. Amorphous materials such as glasses seem to constitute a fundamental challenge to this paradigm. A long held dogma is that transitions into and out of an amorphous glassy state are distinctly different from typical equilibrium phase transitions and must call for radically different concepts. In this work, we critique this belief. We examine systems that may be viewed as simultaneous distribution of different ordinary equilibrium structures. In particular, we focus on the analogs of melting (or freezing) transitions in such distributed systems. The theory that we arrive at yields dynamical, structural, and thermodynamic behaviors of glasses and supercooled fluids that, for the properties tested thus far, are in qualitative and quantitative agreement with experiment. We arrive at a prediction for the viscosity and dielectric relaxations that is universally satisfied for all experimentally measured supercooled liquids and glasses over 15 decades.

cond-mat.stat-mech↗
arXiv2016

Universal collapse of the viscosity of supercooled fluids

All liquids in nature can be supercooled to form a glass. Surprisingly, although this phenomenon has been employed for millennia, it still remains ill-understood. Perhaps the most puzzling feature of supercooled liquids is the dramatic increase in their viscosity as the temperature ($T$) is lowered. This precipitous rise has long posed a fundamental theoretical challenge. Numerous approaches currently attempt to explain this phenomenon. When present, data collapse points to an underlying simplicity in various branches of science. In this Letter, we report on a 16 decade data collapse of the viscosity of 45 different liquids of all known types. Specifically, the viscosity of supercooled liquids scaled by their value at their respective equilibrium melting temperature ($η(T)/η(T_{melt}))$ is, for all temperatures $T<T_{melt}$, a universal function of $(T_{melt} - T)/(B T)$ where $B$ is a constant that does not change significantly from one liquid to another. This exceptionally plain behavior hints at a link between glassy dynamics and the conventional equilibrium melting transition in all known supercooled fluids.

cond-mat.soft↗
arXiv2006

First-order phase transition in easy-plane quantum antiferromagnets

Quantum phase transitions in Mott insulators do not fit easily into the Landau-Ginzburg-Wilson paradigm. A recently proposed alternative to it is the so called deconfined quantum criticality scenario, providing a new paradigm for quantum phase transitions. In this context it has recently been proposed that a second-order phase transition would occur in a two-dimensional spin 1/2 quantum antiferromagnet in the deep easy-plane limit. A check of this conjecture is important for understanding the phase structure of Mott insulators. To this end we have performed large-scale Monte Carlo simulations on an effective gauge theory for this system, including a Berry phase term that projects out the $S=1/2$ sector. The result is a first-order phase transition, thus contradicting the conjecture.

cond-mat.str-el↗
arXiv2004

Phase structure of Abelian Chern-Simons gauge theories

We study the effect of a Chern-Simons (CS) term in the phase structure of two different Abelian gauge theories. For the compact Maxwell-Chern-Simons theory, we obtain that for values $g=n/2π$ of the CS coupling with $n=\pm 1,\pm 2$, the theory is equivalent to a gas of closed loops with contact interaction, exhibiting a phase transition in the $3dXY$ universality class. We also employ Monte Carlo simulations to study the noncompact U(1) Abelian Higgs model with a CS term. Finite size scaling of the third moment of the action yields critical exponents $α$ and $ν$ that vary continuously with the strength of the CS term, and a comparison with available analytical results is made.

cond-mat.str-el↗
arXiv2004

Metal-Insulator Transition in Two- and Three-Dimensional Logarithmic Plasmas

We consider scaling of the mean square dipole moments in a plasma with logarithmic interactions in a two- and three-dimensional system. In both cases, we establish the existence of a low-temperature regime where the mean square dipole moment does not scale with system size and a high-temperature regime where it does scale with system size. Thus, there is a nonanalytic change in the polarizability of the system as a function of temperature, and hence a metal-insulator transition in both cases. The relevance of this transition in three dimensions to quantum phase transitions in 2+1-dimensional systems is briefly discussed.

cond-mat.str-el↗
arXiv2003

Phase Structure of d=2+1 Compact Lattice Gauge Theories and the Transition from Mott Insulator to Fractionalized Insulator

Large-scale Monte Carlo simulations are employed to study phase transitions in the three-dimensional compact abelian Higgs model in adjoint representations of the matter field, labelled by an integer q, for q=2,3,4,5. We also study various limiting cases of the model, such as the $Z_q$ lattice gauge theory, dual to the $3DZ_q$ spin model, and the 3DXY spin model which is dual to the $Z_q$ lattice gauge theory in the limit $q \to \infty$. We have computed the first, second, and third moments of the action to locate the phase transition of the model in the parameter space $(β,κ)$, where $β$ is the coupling constant of the matter term, and $κ$ is the coupling constant of the gauge term. We have found that for q=3, the three-dimensional compact abelian Higgs model has a phase-transition line $β_{\rm{c}}(κ)$ which is first order for $κ$ below a finite {\it tricritical} value $κ_{\rm{tri}}$, and second order above. We have found that the $β=\infty$ first order phase transition persists for finite $β$ and joins the second order phase transition at a tricritical point $(β_{\rm{tri}}, κ_{\rm{tri}}) = (1.23 \pm 0.03, 1.73 \pm 0.03)$. For all other integer $q \geq 2$ we have considered, the entire phase transition line $β_c(κ)$ is critical.

cond-mat.str-el↗
arXiv2002

Criticality in the 2+1-dimensional compact Higgs model and fractionalized insulators

We use a novel method of computing the third moment M_3 of the action of the 2+1-dimensional compact Higgs model in the adjoint representation with q=2 to extract correlation length and specific heat exponents nu and alpha, without invoking hyperscaling. Finite-size scaling analysis of M_3 yields the ratio (1+alpha)/nu and 1/nu separately. We find that alpha and nu vary along the critical line of the theory, which however exhibits a remarkable resilience of Z_2 criticality. We propose this novel universality class to be that of the quantum phase transition from a Mott-Hubbard insulator to a charge-fractionalized insulator in two spatial dimensions.

cond-mat.str-el↗
arXiv1999

Scaling critical behavior of superconductors at zero magnetic field

We consider the scaling behavior in the critical domain of superconductors at zero external magnetic field. The first part of the paper is concerned with the Ginzburg-Landau model in the zero magnetic field Meissner phase. We discuss the scaling behavior of the superfluid density and we give an alternative proof of Josephson's relation for a charged superfluid. This proof is obtained as a consequence of an exact renormalization group equation for the photon mass. We obtain Josephson's relation directly in the form $ρ_{s}\sim t^ν$, that is, we do not need to assume that the hyperscaling relation holds. Next, we give an interpretation of a recent experiment performed in thin films of $YBa_{2}Cu_{3}O_{7-δ}$. We argue that the measured mean field like behavior of the penetration depth exponent $ν'$ is possibly associated with a non-trivial critical behavior and we predict the exponents $ν=1$ and $α=-1$ for the correlation lenght and specific heat, respectively. In the second part of the paper we discuss the scaling behavior in the continuum dual Ginzburg-Landau model. After reviewing lattice duality in the Ginzburg-Landau model, we discuss the continuum dual version by considering a family of scalings characterized by a parameter $ζ$ introduced such that $m_{h,0}^2\sim t^ζ$, where $m_{h,0}$ is the bare mass of the magnetic induction field. We discuss the difficulties in identifying the renormalized magnetic induction mass with the photon mass. We show that the only way to have a critical regime with $ν'=ν\approx 2/3$ is having $ζ\approx 4/3$, that is, with $m_{h,0}$ having the scaling behavior of the renormalized photon mass.

cond-mat.supr-con↗
arXiv1999

Critical properties of the topological Ginzburg-Landau model

We consider a Ginzburg-Landau model for superconductivity with a Chern-Simons term added. The flow diagram contains two charged fixed points corresponding to the tricritical and infrared stable fixed points. The topological coupling controls the fixed point structure and eventually the region of first order transitions disappears. We compute the critical exponents as a function of the topological coupling. We obtain that the value of the $ν$ exponent does not vary very much from the XY value, $ν_{XY}=0.67$. This shows that the Chern-Simons term does not affect considerably the XY scaling of superconductors. We discuss briefly the possible phenomenological applications of this model.

cond-mat.supr-con↗
arXiv1999

Gauge dependenceof the order parameter anomalous dimension in the Ginzburg-Landau model and the critical fluctuations in superconductors

The critical fluctuations of superconductors are discussed in a fixed dimension scaling suited to describe the type II regime. The gauge dependence of the anomalous dimension of the scalar field is stablished exactly from the Ward-Takahashi identities. Its fixed point value gives the $η$ critical exponent and it is shown that $η$ is gauge independent, as expected on physical grounds. In the scaling considered, $η$ is found to be zero at 1-loop order, while $ν\approx 0.63$. This result is just the 1-loop values for the XY model obtained in the fixed dimension renormalization group approach. It is shown that this XY behavior holds at all orders. The result $η=η_{XY}$ should be contrasted with the negative values frequently reported in the literature.

cond-mat.supr-con↗
arXiv1998

Non trivial critical exponents for finite temperature chiral transitions at fixed total fermion number

We analyze the finite temperature chiral restoration transition of the $(D=d+1)$-dimensional Gross-Neveu model for the case of a large number of flavors and fixed total fermion number. This leads to the study of the model with a nonzero imaginary chemical potential. In this formulation of the theory, we have obtained that, in the transition region, the model is described by a chiral conformal field theory where the concepts of dimensional reduction and universality do apply due to a transmutation of statistics which makes fermions act as if they were bosons, having zero energy. This result should be generic for theories with dynamical symmetry breaking, such as Quantum Chromodynamics.

hep-th↗
arXiv1997

A note on the phase transition in a topologically massive Ginzburg-Landau theory

We consider the phase transition in a model which consists of a Ginzburg-Landau free energy for superconductors including a Chern-Simons term. The mean field theory of Halperin, Lubensky and Ma [Phys. Rev. Lett. 32, 292 (1974)] is applied for this model. It is found that the topological mass, $θ$, drives the system into different regimes of phase transition. For instance, there is a $θ_{c}$ such that for $θ<θ_{c}$ a fluctuation induced first order phase transition occurs. On the other hand, for $θ>θ_{c}$ only the second order phase transition exists. The 1-loop renormalization group analysis gives further insight to this picture. The fixed point structure exhibits tricritical and second order fixed points.

cond-mat.supr-con↗
arXiv1996

Critical Fluctuations in Topologically Massive Superconductors

We consider a topologically massive Ginzburg-Landau model of superconductivity. In the context of a mean field calculation, we show that there is an increase in the critical temperature driven by the topological term. It is shown that this effect persists even if we take into account the critical fluctuations. The renormalization group analysis gives further insight on this behavior. The fixed point structure is such that the critical exponents tend to their mean field values for very large values of the topological mass. In this sense, the topological term stabilizes the critical fluctuations of the order parameter.

cond-mat↗