arXiv subjects

J. Tworzydlo

Publications and source records attributed to J. Tworzydlo.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2025

Helical Luttinger liquid on a space-time lattice

The Luttinger model is a paradigm for the breakdown due to interactions of the Fermi liquid description of one-dimensional massless Dirac fermions. Attempts to discretize the model on a one-dimensional lattice have failed to reproduce the established bosonization results, because of the fermion-doubling obstruction: A local and symmetry-preserving discretization of the Hamiltonian introduces a spurious second species of low-energy excitations, while a nonlocal discretization opens a single-particle gap at the Dirac point. Here we show how to work around this obstruction, by discretizing both space and time to obtain a \textit{local} Lagrangian for a helical Luttinger liquid with Hubbard interaction. The approach enables quantum Monte Carlo simulations that preserve the topological protection of an unpaired Dirac cone.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2025

Majorana-metal transition in a disordered superconductor: percolation in a landscape of topological domain walls

Most superconductors are thermal insulators. A disordered chiral $\textit{p}$-wave superconductor, however, can make a transition to a thermal metal phase. Because heat is then transported by Majorana fermions, this phase is referred to as a Majorana metal. Here we present numerical evidence that the mechanism for the phase transition with increasing electrostatic disorder is the percolation of boundaries separating domains of different Chern number. We construct the network of domain walls using the spectral localizer as a ``topological landscape function'', and obtain the thermal metal--insulator phase diagram from the percolation transition.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2023

Tangent fermions: Dirac or Majorana fermions on a lattice without fermion doubling

I. Introduction II. Two-dimensional lattice fermions III. Methods to avoid fermion doubling (sine dispersion, sine plus cosine dispersion, staggered lattice dispersion, linear sawtooth dispersion, tangent dispersion) IV. Topologically protected Dirac cone V. Application: Klein tunneling (tangent fermions on a space-time lattice, wave packet propagation) VI. Application: Strong antilocalization (transfer matrix of tangent fermions, topological insulator versus graphene) VII. Application: Anomalous quantum Hall effect (gauge invariant tangent fermions, topologically protected zeroth Landau level) VIII. Application: Majorana metal (Dirac versus Majorana fermions, phase diagram) IX. Outlook

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2020

Planckian superconductor

The Planckian relaxation rate $\hbar/t_\mathrm{P} = 2πk_\mathrm{B} T$ sets a characteristic time scale for both equilibration of quantum critical systems and maximal quantum chaos. In this note, we show that at the critical coupling between a superconducting dot and the complex Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev model, known to be maximally chaotic, the pairing gap $Δ$ behaves as $η\,\, \hbar/t_\mathrm{P}$ at low temperatures, where $η$ is an order one constant. The lower critical temperature emerges with a further increase of the coupling strength so that the finite $Δ$ domain is settled between the two critical temperatures.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2018

Phase shift of cyclotron orbits at type-I and type-II multi-Weyl nodes

Quantum oscillations of response functions in high magnetic fields tend to reveal some of the most interesting properties of metals. In particular, the oscillation phase shift is sensitive to topological band features, thereby helping to identify the presence of Weyl fermions. In this work we predict characteristic parameter dependence of the phase shift for Weyl fermions with tilted and overtilted dispersion (type I and type II Weyl fermions) and an arbitrary topological charge (multi-Weyl fermions). For type-II Weyl fermions our calculations capture the case of magnetic breakthrough between the electron and the hole part of the dispersion. Here the phase shift turns out to depend only on the quantized topological charge due to cancellation of non-universal contributions from the electron and the hole part.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2018

Valley switch in a graphene superlattice due to pseudo-Andreev reflection

Dirac electrons in graphene have a valley degree of freedom that is being explored as a carrier of information. In that context of "valleytronics" one seeks to coherently manipulate the valley index. Here we show that reflection from a superlattice potential can provide a valley switch: Electrons approaching a pristine-graphene--superlattice-graphene interface near normal incidence are reflected in the opposite valley. We identify the topological origin of this valley switch, by mapping the problem onto that of Andreev reflection from a topological superconductor, with the electron-hole degree of freedom playing the role of the valley index. The valley switch is ideal at a symmetry point of the superlattice potential, but remains close to 100% in a broad parameter range.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2018

Twisted Fermi surface of a thin-film Weyl semimetal

The Fermi surface of a conventional two-dimensional electron gas is equivalent to a circle, up to smooth deformations that preserve the orientation of the equi-energy contour. Here we show that a Weyl semimetal confined to a thin film with an in-plane magnetization and broken spatial inversion symmetry can have a topologically distinct Fermi surface that is twisted into a $\mbox{figure-8}$ $-$ opposite orientations are coupled at a crossing which is protected up to an exponentially small gap. The twisted spectral response to a perpendicular magnetic field $B$ is distinct from that of a deformed Fermi circle, because the two lobes of a \mbox{figure-8} cyclotron orbit give opposite contributions to the Aharonov-Bohm phase. The magnetic edge channels come in two counterpropagating types, a wide channel of width $βl_m^2\propto 1/B$ and a narrow channel of width $l_m\propto 1/\sqrt B$ (with $l_m=\sqrt{\hbar/eB}$ the magnetic length and $β$ the momentum separation of the Weyl points). Only one of the two is transmitted into a metallic contact, providing unique magnetotransport signatures.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2017

Hypersensitivity to perturbations of quantum-chaotic wave-packet dynamics

We re-examine the problem of the "Loschmidt echo", which measures the sensitivity to perturbation of quantum chaotic dynamics. The overlap squared $M(t)$ of two wave packets evolving under slightly different Hamiltonians is shown to have the double-exponential initial decay $\propto \exp(-{\rm constant}\times e^{2λ_0 t})$ in the main part of phase space. The coefficient $λ_0$ is the self-averaging Lyapunov exponent. The average decay $\bar{M}\propto e^{-λ_1 t}$ is single exponential with a different coefficient $λ_1$. The volume of phase space that contributes to $\bar{M}$ vanishes in the classical limit $\hbar\to 0$ for times less than the Ehrenfest time $τ_E=\frac{1}{2}λ_0^{-1}|\ln \hbar|$. It is only after the Ehrenfest time that the average decay is representative for a typical initial condition.

nlin.CD↗

arXiv2017

Chirality blockade of Andreev reflection in a magnetic Weyl semimetal

A Weyl semimetal with broken time-reversal symmetry has a minimum of two species of Weyl fermions, distinguished by their opposite chirality, in a pair of Weyl cones at opposite momenta $\pm K$ that are displaced in the direction of the magnetization. Andreev reflection at the interface between a Weyl semimetal in the normal state (N) and a superconductor (S) that pairs $\pm K$ must involve a switch of chirality, otherwise it is blocked. We show that this "chirality blockade" suppresses the superconducting proximity effect when the magnetization lies in the plane of the NS interface. A Zeeman field at the interface can provide the necessary chirality switch and activate Andreev reflection.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2016

Majorana quasiparticles of inhomogeneous Rashba chain

We investigate the inhomogeneous Rashba chain coupled to a superconducting substrate, hosting the Majorana quasiparticles near its edges. We discuss its subgap spectrum and study how robust are the zero-energy quasiparticles against the diagonal and off-diagonal disorder. Studying the $\mathbb{Z}_2$ topological invariant we show that disorder induced transition from the topologically non-trivial to trivial phases is manifested by characteristic features in the spatially-resolved quasiparticle spectrum at zero energy. We provide evidence for the non-local nature of the zero-energy Majorana quasiparticles, that are well preserved upon partitioning the chain into separate pieces. Even though the Majorana quasiparticles are not completely immune to inhomogeneity we show that they can spread onto other (normal) nanoscopic objects via the proximity effect.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2015

Extended topological group structure due to average reflection symmetry

We extend the single-particle topological classification of insulators and superconductors to include systems in which disorder preserves average reflection symmetry. We show that the topological group structure of bulk Hamiltonians and topological defects is exponentially extended when this additional condition is met, and examine some of its physical consequences. Those include localization-delocalization transitions between topological phases with the same boundary conductance, as well as gapless topological defects stabilized by average reflection symmetry.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2014

Bimodal conductance distribution of Kitaev edge modes in topological superconductors

A two-dimensional superconductor with spin-triplet p-wave pairing supports chiral or helical Majorana edge modes with a quantized (length $L$-independent) thermal conductance. Sufficiently strong anisotropy removes both chirality and helicity, doubling the conductance in the clean system and imposing a super-Ohmic $1/\sqrt{L}$ decay in the presence of disorder. We explain the absence of localization in the framework of the Kitaev Hamiltonian, contrasting the edge modes of the two-dimensional system with the one-dimensional Kitaev chain. While the disordered Kitaev chain has a log-normal conductance distribution peaked at an exponentially small value, the Kitaev edge has a bimodal distribution with a second peak near the conductance quantum. Shot noise provides an alternative, purely electrical method of detection of these charge-neutral edge modes.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2011

Quantum Hall effect in a one-dimensional dynamical system

We construct a periodically time-dependent Hamiltonian with a phase transition in the quantum Hall universality class. One spatial dimension can be eliminated by introducing a second incommensurate driving frequency, so that we can study the quantum Hall effect in a one-dimensional (1D) system. This reduction to 1D is very efficient computationally and would make it possible to perform experiments on the 2D quantum Hall effect using cold atoms in a 1D optical lattice.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2010

Paired phases and Bose-Einstein condensation of spin-one bosons with attractive interaction

We analyze paired phases of cold bosonic atoms with the hyper spin S=1 and with an attractive interaction. We derive mean-field self-consistent equations for the matrix order parameter describing such paired bosons on an optical lattice. The possible solutions are classified according to their symmetries. In particular, we find that the self-consistent equations for the SO(3) symmetric phase are of the same form as those for the scalar bosons with the attractive interaction. This singlet phase may exhibit either the BCS type pairing instability (BCS phase) or the BEC quasiparticle condensation together with the BCS type pairing (BEC phase) for an arbitrary attraction U_0 in the singlet channel of the two body interaction. We show that both condensate phases become stable if a repulsion U_2 in the quintet channel is above a critical value, which depends on U_0 and other thermodynamic parameters.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2010

Absence of a metallic phase in charge-neutral graphene with a random gap

It is known that fluctuations in the electrostatic potential allow for metallic conduction (nonzero conductivity in the limit of an infinite system) if the carriers form a single species of massless two-dimensional Dirac fermions. A nonzero uniform mass $\bar{M}$ opens up an excitation gap, localizing all states at the Dirac point of charge neutrality. Here we investigate numerically whether fluctuations $δM \gg \bar{M} \neq 0$ in the mass can have a similar effect as potential fluctuations, allowing for metallic conduction at the Dirac point. Our negative conclusion confirms earlier expectations, but does not support the recently predicted metallic phase in a random-gap model of graphene.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2009

Switching of electrical current by spin precession in the first Landau level of an inverted-gap semiconductor

We show how the quantum Hall effect in an inverted-gap semiconductor (with electron- and hole-like states at the conduction- and valence-band edges interchanged) can be used to inject, precess, and detect the electron spin along a one-dimensional pathway. The restriction of the electron motion to a single spatial dimension ensures that all electrons experience the same amount of precession in a parallel magnetic field, so that the full electrical current can be switched on and off. As an example, we calculate the magnetoconductance of a p-n interface in a HgTe quantum well and show how it can be used to measure the spin precession due to bulk inversion asymmetry.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2009

Quantum Goos-Hanchen effect in graphene

The Goos-Hanchen (GH) effect is an interference effect on total internal reflection at an interface, resulting in a shift sigma of the reflected beam along the interface. We show that the GH effect at a p-n interface in graphene depends on the pseudospin (sublattice) degree of freedom of the massless Dirac fermions, and find a sign change of sigma at angle of incidence alpha*=arcsin[sin alpha_c]^1/2 determined by the critical angle alpha_c for total reflection. In an n-doped channel with p-doped boundaries the GH effect doubles the degeneracy of the lowest propagating mode, introducing a two-fold degeneracy on top of the usual spin and valley degeneracies. This can be observed as a stepwise increase by 8e^2/h of the conductance with increasing channel width.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2008

Finite difference method for transport properties of massless Dirac fermions

We adapt a finite difference method of solution of the two-dimensional massless Dirac equation, developed in the context of lattice gauge theory, to the calculation of electrical conduction in a graphene sheet or on the surface of a topological insulator. The discretized Dirac equation retains a single Dirac point (no "fermion doubling"), avoids intervalley scattering as well as trigonal warping, and preserves the single-valley time reversal symmetry (= symplectic symmetry) at all length scales and energies -- at the expense of a nonlocal finite difference approximation of the differential operator. We demonstrate the symplectic symmetry by calculating the scaling of the conductivity with sample size, obtaining the logarithmic increase due to antilocalization. We also calculate the sample-to-sample conductance fluctuations as well as the shot noise power, and compare with analytical predictions.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗