arXiv subjects

Mathias S. Scheurer

Publications and source records attributed to Mathias S. Scheurer.

At least 73 records · Page 4Linked to original sources

arXiv2021

Phonon Hall viscosity from phonon-spinon interactions

Motivated by experimental observations, Samajdar et al. [Nature Physics 15, 1290 (2019)] have proposed that the insulating Neel state in the parent compounds of the cuprates is proximate to a quantum phase transition to a state in which Neel order coexists with semion topological order. We study the manner in which proximity to this transition can make the phonons chiral, by inducing a significant phonon Hall viscosity. We describe the spinon-phonon coupling in a lattice spinon model coupled to a strain field, and also using a general continuum theory constrained only by symmetry. We find a nonanalytic Hall viscosity across the transition, with a divergent second derivative at zero temperature.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2021

Correlated insulators, semimetals, and superconductivity in twisted trilayer graphene

Motivated by recent experiments indicating strong superconductivity and intricate correlated insulating and flavor-polarized physics in mirror-symmetric twisted trilayer graphene, we study the effects of interactions in this system close to the magic angle, using a combination of analytical and numerical methods. We identify asymptotically exact correlated many-body ground states at all integer filling fractions $ν$ of the flat bands. To determine their fate when moving away from these fine-tuned points, we apply self-consistent Hartree-Fock numerics and analytic perturbation theory, with good agreement between the two approaches. This allows us to construct a phase diagram for the system as a function of $ν$ and the displacement field, the crucial experimental tuning parameter of the system, and study the spectra of the different phases. The phase diagram is dominated by a correlated semimetallic intervalley coherent state and an insulating sublattice-polarized phase around charge neutrality, $ν=0$, with additional spin-polarization being present at quarter ($ν=-2$) or three quarter ($ν=+2$) fillings of the quasi-flat bands. We further study the superconducting instabilities emerging from these correlated states, both in the absence and in the additional presence of electron-phonon coupling, also taking into account possible Wess-Zumino-Witten terms. In the experimentally relevant regime, we find triplet pairing to dominate, possibly explaining the observed violation of the Pauli limit. Our results have several consequences for experiments as well as future theoretical work and illustrate the rich physics resulting from the interplay of almost flat bands and dispersive Dirac cones in twisted trilayer graphene.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2021

Electric-field-tunable electronic nematic order in twisted double-bilayer graphene

Graphene-based moiré systems have attracted considerable interest in recent years as they display a remarkable variety of correlated phenomena. Besides insulating and superconducting phases in the vicinity of integer fillings of the moiré unit cell, there is growing evidence for electronic nematic order both in twisted bilayer graphene and twisted double-bilayer graphene (tDBG), as signaled by the spontaneous breaking of the threefold rotational symmetry of the moiré superlattices. Here, we combine symmetry-based analysis with a microscopic continuum model to investigate the structure of the nematic phase of tDBG and its experimental manifestations. First, we perform a detailed comparison between the theoretically calculated local density of states and recent scanning tunneling microscopy data [arXiv:2009.11645] to resolve the internal structure of the nematic order parameter in terms of the layer, sublattice, spin, and valley degrees of freedom. We find strong evidence that the dominant contribution to the nematic order parameter comes from states at the moiré scale rather than at the microscopic scale of the individual graphene layers, which demonstrates the key role played by the moiré degrees of freedom and confirms the correlated nature of the nematic phase in tDBG. Secondly, our analysis reveals an unprecedented tunability of the orientation of the nematic director in tDBG by an externally applied electric field, allowing the director to rotate away from high-symmetry crystalline directions. We compute the expected fingerprints of this rotation in both STM and transport experiments, providing feasible ways to probe it. Rooted in the strong sensitivity of the flat bands of tDBG to the displacement field, this effect opens an interesting route to the electrostatic control of electronic nematicity in moiré systems.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2021

Learning crystal field parameters using convolutional neural networks

We present a deep machine learning algorithm to extract crystal field (CF) Stevens parameters from thermodynamic data of rare-earth magnetic materials. The algorithm employs a two-dimensional convolutional neural network (CNN) that is trained on magnetization, magnetic susceptibility and specific heat data that is calculated theoretically within the single-ion approximation and further processed using a standard wavelet transformation. We apply the method to crystal fields of cubic, hexagonal and tetragonal symmetry and for both integer and half-integer total angular momentum values $J$ of the ground state multiplet. We evaluate its performance on both theoretically generated synthetic and previously published experimental data on CeAgSb$_2$, PrAgSb$_2$ and PrMg$_2$Cu$_9$, and find that it can reliably and accurately extract the CF parameters for all site symmetries and values of $J$ considered. This demonstrates that CNNs provide an unbiased approach to extracting CF parameters that avoids tedious multi-parameter fitting procedures.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2020

Superconductivity, correlated insulators, and Wess-Zumino-Witten terms in twisted bilayer graphene

Recent experiments on twisted bilayer graphene have shown a high-temperature parent state with massless Dirac fermions and broken electronic flavor symmetry; superconductivity and correlated insulators emerge from this parent state at lower temperatures. We propose that the superconducting and correlated insulating orders are connected by Wess-Zumino-Witten terms, so that defects of one order contain quanta of another order and skyrmion fluctuations of the correlated insulator are a "mechanism" for superconductivity. We present a comprehensive listing of plausible low-temperature orders, and the parent flavor symmetry breaking orders. The previously characterized topological nature of the band structure of twisted bilayer graphene plays an important role in this analysis.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2020

Universal moiré nematic phase in twisted graphitic systems

Graphene moiré superlattices display electronic flat bands. At integer fillings of these flat bands, energy gaps due to strong electron-electron interactions are generally observed. However, the presence of other correlation-driven phases in twisted graphitic systems at non-integer fillings is unclear. Here, we report scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) measurements that reveal the existence of threefold rotational (C3) symmetry breaking in twisted double bilayer graphene (tDBG). Using spectroscopic imaging over large and uniform areas to characterize the direction and degree of C3 symmetry breaking, we find it to be prominent only at energies corresponding to the flat bands and nearly absent in the remote bands. We demonstrate that the C3 symmetry breaking cannot be explained by heterostrain or the displacement field, and is instead a manifestation of an interaction-driven electronic nematic phase, which emerges even away from integer fillings. Comparing our experimental data with a combination of microscopic and phenomenological modeling, we show that the nematic instability is not associated with the local scale of the graphene lattice, but is an emergent phenomenon at the scale of the moiré lattice, pointing to the universal character of this ordered state in flat band moiré materials.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2020

Unquantized thermal Hall effect in quantum spin liquids with spinon Fermi surfaces

Recent theoretical studies have found quantum spin liquid states with spinon Fermi surfaces upon the application of a magnetic field on a gapped state with topological order. We investigate the thermal Hall conductivity across this transition, describing how the quantized thermal Hall conductivity of the gapped state changes to an unquantized thermal Hall conductivity in the gapless spinon Fermi surface state. We consider two cases, both of potential experimental interest: the state with non-Abelian Ising topological order on the honeycomb lattice, and the state with Abelian chiral spin liquid topological order on the triangular lattice.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2020

Protection of parity-time symmetry in topological many-body systems: non-Hermitian toric code and fracton models

In the study of $\mathcal{P}\mathcal{T}$-symmetric quantum systems with non-Hermitian perturbations, one of the most important questions is whether eigenvalues stay real or whether $\mathcal{P}\mathcal{T}$-symmetry is spontaneously broken when eigenvalues meet. A particularly interesting set of eigenstates is provided by the degenerate ground-state subspace of systems with topological order. In this paper, we present simple criteria that guarantee the protection of $\mathcal{P}\mathcal{T}$-symmetry and, thus, the reality of the eigenvalues in topological many-body systems. We formulate these criteria in both geometric and algebraic form, and demonstrate them using the toric code and several different fracton models as examples. Our analysis reveals that $\mathcal{P}\mathcal{T}$-symmetry is robust against a remarkably large class of non-Hermitian perturbations in these models; this is particularly striking in the case of fracton models due to the exponentially large number of degenerate states.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2020

Identifying topological order through unsupervised machine learning

The Landau description of phase transitions relies on the identification of a local order parameter that indicates the onset of a symmetry-breaking phase. In contrast, topological phase transitions evade this paradigm and, as a result, are harder to identify. Recently, machine learning techniques have been shown to be capable of characterizing topological order in the presence of human supervision. Here, we propose an unsupervised approach based on diffusion maps that learns topological phase transitions from raw data without the need of manual feature engineering. Using bare spin configurations as input, the approach is shown to be capable of classifying samples of the two-dimensional XY model by winding number and capture the Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless transition. We also demonstrate the success of the approach on the Ising gauge theory, another paradigmatic model with topological order. In addition, a connection between the output of diffusion maps and the eigenstates of a quantum-well Hamiltonian is derived. Topological classification via diffusion maps can therefore enable fully unsupervised studies of exotic phases of matter.

cond-mat.stat-mech↗

arXiv2020

Microscopic pairing mechanism, order parameter, and disorder sensitivity in moiré superlattices: Applications to twisted double-bilayer graphene

Starting from a continuum-model description, we develop a microscopic weak-coupling theory for superconductivity in twisted double-bilayer graphene. We study both electron-phonon and entirely electronic pairing mechanisms. In each case, the leading superconducting instability transforms under the trivial representation, $A$, of the point group $C_3$ of the system, while the subleading pairing phases belong to the $E$ channel. We explicitly compute the momentum dependence of the associated order parameters and find that the leading state has no nodal points for electron-phonon pairing but exhibits six sign changes on the Fermi surface if the Coulomb interaction dominates. On top of these system-specific considerations, we also present general results relevant to other correlated graphene-based moiré superlattice systems. We show that, irrespective of microscopic details, triplet pairing will be stabilized if the collective electronic fluctuations breaking the enhanced $\text{SU}(2)_+ \times \text{SU}(2)_-$ spin symmetry of these systems are odd under time reversal, even when the main $\text{SU}(2)_+ \times \text{SU}(2)_-$-symmetric part of the pairing glue is provided by phonons. Furthermore, we discuss the disorder sensitivity of the candidate pairing states and demonstrate that the triplet phase is protected against disorder on the moiré scale.

cond-mat.supr-con↗

arXiv2020

Generative models for sampling and phase transition indication in spin systems

Recently, generative machine-learning models have gained popularity in physics, driven by the goal of improving the efficiency of Markov chain Monte Carlo techniques and of exploring their potential in capturing experimental data distributions. Motivated by their ability to generate images that look realistic to the human eye, we here study generative adversarial networks (GANs) as tools to learn the distribution of spin configurations and to generate samples, conditioned on external tuning parameters, such as temperature. We propose ways to efficiently represent the physical states, e.g., by exploiting symmetries, and to minimize the correlations between generated samples. We present a detailed evaluation of the various modifications, using the two-dimensional XY model as an example, and find considerable improvements in our proposed implicit generative model. It is also shown that the model can reliably generate samples in the vicinity of the phase transition, even when it has not been trained in the critical region. On top of using the samples generated by the model to capture the phase transition via evaluation of observables, we show how the model itself can be employed as an unsupervised indicator of transitions, by constructing measures of the model's susceptibility to changes in tuning parameters.

cond-mat.stat-mech↗

arXiv2020

Bilocal quantum criticality

We consider 2+1 dimensional conformal gauge theories coupled to additional degrees of freedom which induce a spatially local but long-range in time $1/(τ-τ')^2$ interaction between gauge-neutral local operators. Such theories have been argued to describe the hole-doped cuprates near optimal doping. We focus on a SU(2) gauge theory with $N_h$ flavors of adjoint Higgs fields undergoing a quantum transition between Higgs and confining phases: the $1/(τ-τ')^2$ interaction arises from a spectator large Fermi surface of electrons. The large $N_h$ expansion leads to an effective action containing fields which are bilocal in time but local in space. We find a strongly-coupled fixed point at order $1/N_h$, with dynamic critical exponent $z > 1$. We show that the entropy preserves hyperscaling, but nevertheless leads to a linear in temperature specific heat with a co-efficient which has a finite enhancement near the quantum critical point.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2020

Pairing in graphene-based moiré superlattices

We present a systematic classification and analysis of possible pairing instabilities in graphene-based moiré superlattices. Motivated by recent experiments on twisted double-bilayer graphene showing signs of triplet superconductivity, we analyze both singlet and triplet pairing separately, and describe how these two channels behave close to the limit where the system is invariant under separate spin rotations in the two valleys, realizing an SU(2)$_+$ $\times$ SU(2)$_-$ symmetry. Further, we discuss the conditions under which singlet and triplet can mix via two nearly degenerate transitions, and how the different pairing states behave when an external magnetic field is applied. The consequences of the additional microscopic or emergent approximate symmetries relevant for superconductivity in twisted bilayer graphene and ABC trilayer graphene on hexagonal boron nitride are described in detail. We also analyze which of the pairing states can arise in mean-field theory and study the impact of corrections coming from ferromagnetic fluctuations. For instance, we show that, close to the parameters of mean-field theory, a nematic mixed singlet-triplet state emerges. Our study illustrates that graphene superlattices provide a rich platform for exotic superconducting states, and allow for the admixture of singlet and triplet pairing even in the absence of spin-orbit coupling.

cond-mat.supr-con↗

arXiv2020

Gauge Theories for the Thermal Hall Effect

We consider the thermal Hall effect of fermionic matter coupled to emergent gauge fields in 2+1 dimensions. While the low-temperature thermal Hall conductivity of bulk topological phases can be connected to chiral edge states and a gravitational anomaly, there is no such interpretation at nonzero temperatures above 2+1 dimensional quantum critical points. In the limit of a large number of matter flavors, the leading contribution to the thermal Hall conductivity is that from the fermionic matter. The next-to-leading contribution is from the gauge fluctuations, and this has a sign which is opposite to that of the matter contribution. We illustrate this by computations on a Dirac Chern-Simons theory of the quantum phase transition in a square-lattice antiferromagnet involving the onset of semion topological order. We find similar results for a model of the pseudogap metal with Fermi pockets coupled to an emergent U(1) gauge field. We note connections to recent observations on the hole-doped cuprates: our theory captures the main trends, but the overall magnitude of the effect is smaller than that observed.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2020

Electron irradiation effects on superconductivity in PdTe$_2$: an application of a generalized Anderson theorem

Low temperature ($\sim$ 20~K) electron irradiation with 2.5 MeV relativistic electrons was used to study the effect of controlled non-magnetic disorder on the normal and superconducting properties of the type-II Dirac semimetal PdTe$_2$. We report measurements of longitudinal and Hall resistivity, thermal conductivity and London penetration depth using tunnel-diode resonator technique for various irradiation doses. The normal state electrical resistivity follows Matthiessen rule with an increase of the residual resistivity at a rate of $\sim$0.77$ μΩ$cm/$(\textrm{C}/\textrm{cm}^2)$. London penetration depth and thermal conductivity results show that the superconducting state remains fully gapped. The superconducting transition temperature is suppressed at a non-zero rate that is about sixteen times slower than described by the Abrikosov-Gor'kov dependence, applicable to magnetic impurity scattering in isotropic, single-band $s$-wave superconductors. To gain information about the gap structure and symmetry of the pairing state, we perform a detailed analysis of these experimental results based on insight from a generalized Anderson theorem for multi-band superconductors. This imposes quantitative constraints on the gap anisotropies for each of the possible pairing candidate states. We conclude that the most likely pairing candidate is an unconventional $A_{1g}^{+-}$ state. While we cannot exclude the conventional $A_{1g}^{++}$ and the triplet $A_{1u}$, we demonstrate that these states require additional assumptions about the orbital structure of the disorder potential to be consistent with our experimental results, e.g., a ratio of inter- to intra-band scattering for the singlet state significantly larger than one. Due to the generality of our theoretical framework, we think that it will also be useful for irradiation studies in other spin-orbit-coupled multi-orbital systems.

cond-mat.supr-con↗

arXiv2020

Unsupervised machine learning and band topology

The study of topological bandstructures is an active area of research in condensed matter physics and beyond. Here, we combine recent progress in this field with developments in machine-learning, another rising topic of interest. Specifically, we introduce an unsupervised machine-learning approach that searches for and retrieves paths of adiabatic deformations between Hamiltonians, thereby clustering them according to their topological properties. The algorithm is general as it does not rely on a specific parameterization of the Hamiltonian and is readily applicable to any symmetry class. We demonstrate the approach using several different models in both one and two spatial dimensions and for different symmetry classes with and without crystalline symmetries. Accordingly, it is also shown how trivial and topological phases can be diagnosed upon comparing with a generally designated set of trivial atomic insulators.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2019

Not all doped Mott insulators have a pseudogap: key role of van Hove singularities

The Mott insulating phase of the parent compounds is frequently taken as starting point for the underdoped high-$T_c$ cuprate superconductors. In particular, the pseudogap state is often considered as deriving from the Mott insulator. In this work, we systematically investigate different weakly-doped Mott insulators on the square and triangular lattice to clarify the relationship between the pseudogap and Mottness. We show that doping a two-dimensional Mott insulator does not necessarily lead to a pseudogap phase. Despite its inherent strong-coupling nature, we find that the existence or absence of a pseudogap depends sensitively on non-interacting band parameters and identify the crucial role played by the van Hove singularities of the system. Motivated by a SU(2) gauge theory for the pseudogap state, we propose and verify numerically a simple equation that governs the evolution of characteristic features in the electronic scattering rate.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2019

Phases of SU(2) gauge theory with multiple adjoint Higgs fields in 2+1 dimensions

A recent work (arXiv:1811.04930) proposed a SU(2) gauge theory for optimal doping criticality in the cuprate superconductors. The theory contains $N_h$ Higgs fields transforming under the adjoint representation of SU(2), with $N_h=1$ for the electron-doped cuprates, and $N_h=4$ for the hole-doped cuprates. We investigate the strong-coupling dynamics of this gauge theory, while ignoring the coupling to fermionic excitations. We integrate out the SU(2) gauge field in a strong-coupling expansion, and obtain a lattice action for the Higgs fields alone. We study such a lattice action, with O($N_h$) global symmetry, in an analytic large $N_h$ expansion and by Monte Carlo simulations for $N_h=4$ and find consistent results. We find a confining phase with O($N_h$) symmetry preserved (this describes the Fermi liquid phase in the cuprates), and Higgs phases (describing the pseudogap phase of the cuprates) with different patterns of the broken global O($N_h$) symmetry. One of the Higgs phases is topologically trivial, implying the absence of any excitations with residual gauge charges. The other Higgs phase has $\mathbb{Z}_2$ topological order, with `vison' excitations carrying a $\mathbb{Z}_2$ gauge charge. We find consistent regimes of stability for the topological Higgs phase in both our numerical and analytical analyses.

cond-mat.str-el↗