arXiv subjects

Giovanni Vignale

Publications and source records attributed to Giovanni Vignale.

At least 91 records · Page 5Linked to original sources

arXiv2015

The intrinsic charge and spin conductivities of doped graphene in the Fermi-Liquid regime

The experimental availability of ultra-high-mobility samples of graphene opens the possibility to realize and study experimentally the "hydrodynamic" regime of the electron liquid. In this regime the rate of electron-electron collisions is extremely high and dominates over the electron-impurity and electron-phonon scattering rates, which are therefore neglected. The system is brought to a local quasi-equilibrium described by a set of smoothly varying (in space and time) functions, {\it i.e.} the density, the velocity field and the local temperature. In this paper we calculate the charge and spin conductivities of doped graphene due solely to electron-electron interactions. We show that, in spite of the linear low-energy band dispersion, graphene behaves in a wide range of temperatures as an effectively Galilean invariant system: the charge conductivity diverges in the limit $T \to 0$, while the spin conductivity remains finite. These results pave the way to the description of charge transport in graphene in terms of Navier-Stokes equations.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2014

Long-lived spin plasmons in a spin-polarized two-dimensional electron gas

Collective charge-density modes (plasmons) of the clean two-dimensional unpolarized electron gas are stable, for momentum conservation prevents them from decaying into single-particle excitations. Collective spin-density modes (spin plasmons) possess no similar protection and rapidly decay by production of electron-hole pairs. Nevertheless, if the electron gas has a sufficiently high degree of spin polarization ($P>1/7$, where $P$ is the ratio of the equilibrium spin density and the total electron density, for a parabolic single-particle spectrum) we find that a long-lived spin-plasmon---a collective mode in which the densities of up and down spins oscillate with opposite phases---can exist within a "pseudo gap" of the single-particle excitation spectrum. The ensuing collectivization of the spin excitation spectrum is quite remarkable and should be directly visible in Raman scattering experiments. The predicted mode could dramatically improve the efficiency of coupling between spin-wave-generating devices, such as spin-torque oscillators.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2014

Highly confined low-loss plasmons in graphene-boron nitride heterostructures

Graphene plasmons were predicted to possess ultra-strong field confinement and very low damping at the same time, enabling new classes of devices for deep subwavelength metamaterials, single-photon nonlinearities, extraordinarily strong light-matter interactions and nano-optoelectronic switches. While all of these great prospects require low damping, thus far strong plasmon damping was observed, with both impurity scattering and many-body effects in graphene proposed as possible explanations. With the advent of van der Waals heterostructures, new methods have been developed to integrate graphene with other atomically flat materials. In this letter we exploit near-field microscopy to image propagating plasmons in high quality graphene encapsulated between two films of hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN). We determine dispersion and particularly plasmon damping in real space. We find unprecedented low plasmon damping combined with strong field confinement, and identify the main damping channels as intrinsic thermal phonons in the graphene and dielectric losses in the h-BN. The observation and in-depth understanding of low plasmon damping is the key for the development of graphene nano-photonic and nano-optoelectronic devices.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2014

Plasmon losses due to electron-phonon scattering: the case of graphene encapsulated in hexagonal Boron Nitride

Graphene sheets encapsulated between hexagonal Boron Nitride (hBN) slabs display superb electronic properties due to very limited scattering from extrinsic disorder sources such as Coulomb impurities and corrugations. Such samples are therefore expected to be ideal platforms for highly-tunable low-loss plasmonics in a wide spectral range. In this Article we present a theory of collective electron density oscillations in a graphene sheet encapsulated between two hBN semi-infinite slabs (hBN/G/hBN). Graphene plasmons hybridize with hBN optical phonons forming hybrid plasmon-phonon (HPP) modes. We focus on scattering of these modes against graphene's acoustic phonons and hBN optical phonons, two sources of scattering that are expected to play a key role in hBN/G/hBN stacks. We find that at room temperature the scattering against graphene's acoustic phonons is the dominant limiting factor for hBN/G/hBN stacks, yielding theoretical inverse damping ratios of hybrid plasmon-phonon modes of the order of $50$-$60$, with a weak dependence on carrier density and a strong dependence on illumination frequency. We confirm that the plasmon lifetime is not directly correlated with the mobility: in fact, it can be anti-correlated.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2014

Derivation of effective spin-orbit Hamiltonians and spin lifetimes, with application to SrTiO$_3$ heterostructures

A general approach is derived for constructing an effective spin-orbit Hamiltonian for nonmagnetic materials, which is useful for calculating spin-dependent properties near an arbitrary point in momentum space with pseudospin degeneracy. The formalism is verified through comparisons with other approaches for III-V semiconductors, and its general applicability is illustrated by deriving the spin-orbit interaction and predicting spin lifetimes for strained SrTiO$_3$ and a two-dimensional electron gas in SrTiO$_3$ (such as at the LaAlO$_3$/SrTiO$_3$ interface). These results suggest robust spin coherence and spin transport properties in SrTiO$_3$-based materials at room temperature.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2014

The quasiparticle lifetime in a doped graphene sheet

We present a calculation of the quasiparticle decay rate due to electron-electron interactions in a doped graphene sheet. In particular, we emphasize subtle differences between the perturbative calculation of this quantity in a doped graphene sheet and the corresponding one in ordinary parabolic-band two-dimensional (2D) electron liquids. In the random phase approximation, dynamical overscreening near the light cone yields a universal quasiparticle lifetime, which is independent of the dielectric environment surrounding the 2D massless Dirac fermion fluid.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2014

How many-body effects modify the van der Waals interaction between graphene sheets

Undoped graphene (Gr) sheets at low temperatures are known, via Random Phase Approximation (RPA) calculations, to exhibit unusual van der Waals (vdW) forces. Here we show that graphene is the first known system where effects beyond the RPA make qualitative changes to the vdW force. For large separations, $D \gtrsim 10$nm where only the $π_z$ vdW forces remain, we find the Gr-Gr vdW interaction is substantially reduced from the RPA prediction. Its $D$ dependence is very sensitive to the form of the long-wavelength many-body enhancement of the velocity of the massless Dirac fermions, and may provide independent confirmation of the latter via direct force measurements.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2014

A Corbino disk viscometer for 2D quantum electron liquids

The shear viscosity of a variety of strongly interacting quantum fluids, ranging from ultracold atomic Fermi gases to quark-gluon plasmas, can be accurately measured. On the contrary, no experimental data exist, to the best of our knowledge, on the shear viscosity of two-dimensional quantum electron liquids hosted in a solid-state matrix. In this Letter we propose a Corbino disk device, which allows a determination of the viscosity of a quantum electron liquid from the dc potential difference that arises between the inner and the outer edge of the disk in response to an oscillating magnetic flux.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2013

Anomalous spin precession and spin Hall effect in semiconductor quantum wells

Spin-orbit (SO) interactions give a spin-dependent correction r_so to the position operator, referred to as the anomalous position operator. We study the contributions of r_so to the spin-Hall effect (SHE) in quasi two-dimensional (2D) semiconductor quantum wells with strong band structure SO interactions that cause spin precession. The skew scattering and side-jump scattering terms in the SHE vanish, but we identify two additional terms in the SHE, due to r_so, which have not been considered in the literature so far. One term reflects the modification of the spin precession due to the action of the external electric field (the field drives the current in the quantum well), which produces, via r_so, an effective magnetic field perpendicular to the plane of the quantum well. The other term reflects a similar modification of the spin precession due to the action of the electric field created by random impurities, and appears in a careful formulation of the Born approximation. We refer to these two effects collectively as anomalous spin precession and we note that they contribute to the SHE to the first order in the SO coupling constant even though they formally appear to be of second order. In electron systems with weak momentum scattering, the contribution of the anomalous spin precession due to the external electric field equals 1/2 the usual side-jump SHE, while the additional impurity-dependent contribution depends on the form of the band structure SO coupling. For band structure SO linear in wave vector the two additional contributions cancel. For band structure SO cubic in wave vector only the contribution due to external electric field is present, and can be detected through its density dependence. In 2D hole systems both anomalous spin precession contributions vanish identically.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2013

The impact of disorder on Dirac plasmon losses

Recent scattering-type scanning near-field optical spectroscopy (s-SNOM) experiments on single-layer graphene have reported Dirac plasmon lifetimes that are substantially shorter than the dc transport scattering time τ_{tr}. We highlight that the plasmon lifetime is fundamentally different from τ_{tr} since it is controlled by the imaginary part of the current-current linear response function at finite momentum and frequency. We first present the minimal theory of the extrinsic lifetime of Dirac plasmons due to scattering against impurities. We then show that a very reasonable concentration of charged impurities yields a plasmon damping rate which is in good agreement with s-SNOM experimental results.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2013

Intrinsic lifetime of Dirac plasmons in graphene

Dirac plasmons in a doped graphene sheet have recently been shown to enable confinement of light to ultrasmall volumes. In this work we calculate the intrinsic lifetime of a Dirac plasmon in a doped graphene sheet by analyzing the role of electron-electron interactions beyond the random phase approximation. The damping mechanism at work is intrinsic since it operates also in disorder-free samples and in the absence of lattice vibrations. We demonstrate that graphene's sublattice-pseudospin degree of freedom suppresses intrinsic plasmon losses with respect to those that occur in ordinary two-dimensional electron liquids. We relate our findings to a microscopic calculation of the homogeneous dynamical conductivity at energies below the single-particle absorption threshold.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2011

Comment on "Modifying the variational principle in the action integral functional derivation of time-dependent density functional theory" by Jochen Schirmer [arXiv:1010.4223]

In a paper recently published in Phys. Rev. A [arXiv:1010.4223], Schirmer has criticized an earlier work of mine [arXiv:0803.2727], as well as the foundations of time-dependent density functional theory. In Ref.[2], I showed that the so-called "causality paradox" - i.e., the failure of the exchange-correlation potential derived from the Runge-Gross time-dependent variational principle to satisfy causality requirements - can be solved by a careful reformulation of that variational principle. Fortunately, the criticism presented in Ref.[1] is based on elementary misunderstandings of the nature of functionals, gauge transformations, and the time-dependent variational principle. In this Comment I wish to point out and clear these misunderstandings.

cond-mat.other↗

arXiv2011

Viscous corrections to the resistance of nano-junctions: a dispersion relation approach

It is well known that the viscosity of a homogeneous electron liquid diverges in the limits of zero frequency and zero temperature. A nanojunction breaks translational invariance and necessarily cuts off this divergence. However, the estimate of the ensuing viscosity is far from trivial. Here, we propose an approach based on a Kramers-Krönig dispersion relation, which connects the zero-frequency viscosity, $η(0)$, to the high-frequency shear modulus, $μ_{\infty}$, of the electron liquid via $η(0) =μ_{\infty} τ$, with $τ$ the junction-specific momentum relaxation time. By making use of a simple formula derived from time-dependent current-density functional theory we then estimate the many-body contributions to the resistance for an integrable junction potential and find that these viscous effects may be much larger than previously suggested for junctions of low conductance.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2009

Side-jumps in the spin-Hall effect: construction of the Boltzmann collision integral

We present a systematic derivation of the side-jump contribution to the spin-Hall current in systems without band structure spin-orbit interactions, focusing on the construction of the collision integral for the Boltzmann equation. Starting from the quantum Liouville equation for the density operator we derive an equation describing the dynamics of the density matrix in the first Born approximation and to first order in the driving electric field. Elastic scattering requires conservation of the total energy, including the spin-orbit interaction energy with the electric field: this results in a first correction to the customary collision integral found in the Born approximation. A second correction is due to the change in the carrier position during collisions. It stems from the part of the density matrix off-diagonal in wave vector. The two corrections to the collision integral add up and are responsible for the total side-jump contribution to the spin-Hall current. The spin-orbit-induced correction to the velocity operator also contains terms diagonal and off-diagonal in momentum space, which together involve the total force acting on the system. This force is explicitly shown to vanish (on the average) in the steady state: thus the total contribution to the spin-Hall current due to the additional terms in the velocity operator is zero.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2009

Transverse spin diffusion in ferromagnets

We discuss the dissipative diffusion-type term of the form $\mathbf{m}\times\nabla^2\partial_t\mathbf{m}$ in the phenomenological Landau-Lifshitz equation of ferromagnetic precession, which describes enhanced Gilbert damping of finite-momentum spin waves. This term arises physically from itinerant-electron spin flows through a perturbed ferromagnetic configuration and can be understood to originate in the ferromagnetic spin pumping in the continuum limit. We develop a general phenomenology as well as provide microscopic theory for the Stoner and s-d models of ferromagnetism, taking into account disorder and electron-electron scattering. The latter is manifested in our problem through the Coulomb drag between the spin bands. The spin diffusion is identified in terms of the transverse spin conductivity, in analogy with the Einstein relation in the kinetic theory.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2008

Electronic zero-point oscillations in the strong-interaction limit of density functional theory

The exchange-correlation energy in Kohn-Sham density functional theory can be expressed exactly in terms of the change in the expectation of the electron-electron repulsion operator when, in the many-electron hamiltonian, this same operator is multiplied by a real parameter $λ$ varying between 0 (Kohn-Sham system) and 1 (physical system). In this process, usually called adiabatic connection, the one-electron density is kept fixed by a suitable local one-body potential. The strong-interaction limit of density functional theory, defined as the limit $λ\to\infty$, turns out to be, like the opposite non-interacting Kohn-Sham limit ($λ\to 0$) mathematically simpler than the physical ($λ=1$) case, and can be used to build an approximate interpolation formula between $λ\to 0$ and $λ\to\infty$ for the exchange-correlation energy. Here we extend the exact treatment of the $λ\to\infty$ limit [Phys. Rev. A {\bf 75}, 042511 (2007)] to the next leading term, describing zero-point oscillations of strictly correlated electrons, with numerical examples for small spherical atoms. We also propose an improved approximate functional for the zero-point term and a revised interpolation formula for the exchange-correlation energy satisfying more exact constraints.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2008

Incompleteness of the Landauer Formula for Electronic Transport

We show that the Landauer multi-terminal formula for the conductance of a nanoscale system is incomplete because it does not take into account many-body effects which cannot be treated as contributions to the single-particle transmission probabilities. We show that the physical origin of these effects is related to the viscous nature of the electron liquid, and develop a perturbative formalism, based on the time-dependent current-density-functional theory, for calculating the corrections to the resistance in terms of the ``Kohn-Sham current distribution'' and the exchange-correlation kernel. The difficulties that still remain in calculating the latter are critically discussed.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2008

Quantum Stress Focusing in Descriptive Chemistry

We show that several important concepts of descriptive chemistry, such as atomic shells, bonding electron pairs and lone electron pairs, may be described in terms of {\it quantum stress focusing}, i.e. the spontaneous formation of high-pressure regions in an electron gas. This description subsumes previous mathematical constructions, such as the Laplacian of the density and the electron localization function, and provides a new tool for visualizing chemical structure. We also show that the full stress tensor, defined as the derivative of the energy with respect to a local deformation, can be easily calculated from density functional theory.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗