arXiv subjects

Henk T. C. Stoof

Publications and source records attributed to Henk T. C. Stoof.

7 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Edge states of a Bi$_2$Se$_3$ nanosheet in a perpendicular magnetic field

Conventional wisdom dictates that the conducting edge states of two-dimensional topological insulators of the Bi$_2$Se$_3$ family are protected by time-reversal symmetry. However, theoretical bulk calculations and a recent experiment show that the edge states persist in the presence of large external magnetic fields. To address this apparent contradiction, we have developed an analytical description for the edge-state wave function of a semi-infinite sample in a perpendicular magnetic field. Our description relies on the usual bulk Landau levels, together with additional states arising due to the presence of the hard wall, which are unnormalizable in the infinite system. The analytical wave functions agree extremely well with numerical calculations and can be used to directly analyze the behavior of the edge states in a magnetic field.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2026

Holographic Strange Metals for Philosophers and Physicists

This paper introduces the physics and philosophy of strange metals, which are characterized by unusual electrical and thermal properties that deviate from conventional metallic behaviour. The anomalous strange-metal behaviour discussed here appears in the normal state of a copper-oxide high-temperature superconductor, and it cannot be described using standard condensed-matter physics. Currently, it can only be described through a holographic dual, viz.~a four-dimensional black hole in anti-de Sitter spacetime. This paper first introduces the theory of, and specific experiments carried out on, strange metals. Then it discusses a number of philosophical questions that strange metals open up regarding the experimental evidence for holography and its realist interpretation. Strange metals invert the explanatory arrows, in that usual holographic arguments are seen as giving explanations of the bulk quantum-gravity theory from the boundary. By contrast, the aim here is, by using holography, to explain the experimentally discovered and anomalous properties of strange metals.

physics.hist-ph↗

arXiv2026

Variational and field-theoretical approach to exciton-exciton interactions and biexcitons in semiconductors

Bound electron-hole pairs in semiconductors known as excitons are the subject of intense research due to their potential for optoelectronic devices and applications, especially in the realm of two-dimensional materials. While the properties of free excitons in these systems are well understood, a general description of the interactions between these quasiparticles is complicated due to their composite nature, which leads to important exchange processes that can take place between the identical fermions of different excitons. In this work, we employ a variational approach to study interactions between Wannier excitons and obtain an effective interaction potential between two ground-state excitons in a system of spin-degenerate electrons and holes. This potential is in general nonlocal in position space and depends on the combined spin configurations of the electrons and holes. When particularized to the case of hydrogen-like excitons with a heavy hole, this potential becomes local and exactly reproduces the Heitler-London result for two interacting hydrogen atoms. Thus, our result can be interpreted as a generalization of the Heitler-London potential to the case of arbitrary masses. We also show how including corrections due to excited states into the theory results in a van der Waals potential at large distances, which is expected due to the induced dipole-dipole nature of the interactions. Our approach is also applicable to more complicated systems with nonhydrogenic exciton series, such as layered semiconductors with Rytova-Keldysh interactions. Additionally, we use a path-integral formalism to develop a many-body theory for a dilute gas of excitons, resulting in an excitonic action that formally includes many-body interactions between excitons. While in this approach the field representing the excitons is exactly bosonic, we clarify how the internal exchange processes arise in...

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2021

Thermodynamics and transport of holographic nodal line semimetals

We study various thermodynamic and transport properties of a holographic model of a nodal line semimetal (NLSM) at finite temperature, including the quantum phase transition to a topologically trivial phase, with Dirac semimetal-like conductivity. At zero temperature, composite fermion spectral functions obtained from holography are known to exhibit multiple Fermi surfaces. Similarly, for the holographic NLSM we observe multiple nodal lines instead of just one. We show, however, that as the temperature is raised these nodal lines broaden and disappear into the continuum one by one, so there is a finite range of temperatures for which there is only a single nodal line visible in the spectrum. We compute several transport coefficients in the holographic NLSM as a function of temperature, namely the charge and thermal conductivities, and the shear viscosities. By adding a new non-linear coupling to the model we are able to control the low frequency limit of the electrical conductivity in the direction orthogonal to the plane of the nodal line, allowing us to better match the conductivity of real NLSMs. The boundary quantum field theory is anisotropic and therefore has explicitly broken Lorentz invariance, which leads to a stress tensor that is not symmetric. This has important consequences for the energy and momentum transport: the thermal conductivity at vanishing charge density is not simply fixed by a Ward identity, and there are a much larger number of independent shear viscosities than in a Lorentz-invariant system.

hep-th↗

arXiv2021

Putting a Spin on Language: A Quantum Interpretation of Unary Connectives for Linguistic Applications

Extended versions of the Lambek Calculus currently used in computational linguistics rely on unary modalities to allow for the controlled application of structural rules affecting word order and phrase structure. These controlled structural operations give rise to derivational ambiguities that are missed by the original Lambek Calculus or its pregroup simplification. Proposals for compositional interpretation of extended Lambek Calculus in the compact closed category of FVect and linear maps have been made, but in these proposals the syntax-semantics mapping ignores the control modalities, effectively restricting their role to the syntax. Our aim is to turn the modalities into first-class citizens of the vectorial interpretation. Building on the directional density matrix semantics, we extend the interpretation of the type system with an extra spin density matrix space. The interpretation of proofs then results in ambiguous derivations being tensored with orthogonal spin states. Our method introduces a way of simultaneously representing co-existing interpretations of ambiguous utterances, and provides a uniform framework for the integration of lexical and derivational ambiguity.

cs.CL↗

arXiv2020

Observation of the quantized motion of excitons in CdSe nanoplatelets

We show that the finite lateral sizes of ultrathin CdSe nanoplatelets strongly affect both their photoluminescence and optical absorption spectra. This is in contrast to the situation in quantum wells, in which the large lateral sizes may be assumed to be infinite. The lateral sizes of the nanoplatelets are varied over a range of a few to tens of nanometers. For these sizes excitons experience in-plane quantum confinement, and their center-of-mass motion becomes quantized. Our direct experimental observation of the discretization of the exciton center-of-mass states can be well understood on the basis of the simple particle-in-a-box model.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2020

Density Matrices with Metric for Derivational Ambiguity

Recent work on vector-based compositional natural language semantics has proposed the use of density matrices to model lexical ambiguity and (graded) entailment (e.g. Piedeleu et al 2015, Bankova et al 2019, Sadrzadeh et al 2018). Ambiguous word meanings, in this work, are represented as mixed states, and the compositional interpretation of phrases out of their constituent parts takes the form of a strongly monoidal functor sending the derivational morphisms of a pregroup syntax to linear maps in FdHilb. Our aims in this paper are threefold. Firstly, we replace the pregroup front end by a Lambek categorial grammar with directional implications expressing a word's selectional requirements. By the Curry-Howard correspondence, the derivations of the grammar's type logic are associated with terms of the (ordered) linear lambda calculus; these terms can be read as programs for compositional meaning assembly with density matrices as the target semantic spaces. Secondly, we extend on the existing literature and introduce a symmetric, nondegenerate bilinear form called a "metric" that defines a canonical isomorphism between a vector space and its dual, allowing us to keep a distinction between left and right implication. Thirdly, we use this metric to define density matrix spaces in a directional form, modeling the ubiquitous derivational ambiguity of natural language syntax, and show how this alows an integrated treatment of lexical and derivational forms of ambiguity controlled at the level of the interpretation.

cs.CL↗