arXiv subjects

Mehdi Kargarian

Publications and source records attributed to Mehdi Kargarian.

At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv2019

Vortex bound states of charge and magnetic fluctuations-induced topological superconductors in heterostructures

The helical electron states on the surface of topological insulators or elemental Bismuth become unstable toward superconducting pairing formation when coupled to the charge or magnetic fluctuations. The latter gives rise to pairing instability in chiral channels $d_{xy}\pm i d_{x^2-y^2}$, as has been observed recently in epitaxial Bi/Ni bilayer system at relatively high temperature, while the former favors a pairing with zero total angular momentum. Motivated by this observation we study the vortex bound states in these superconducting states. We consider a minimal model describing the superconductivity in the presence of a vortex in the superconducting order parameter. We show that zero-energy states appear in the spectrum of the vortex core for all pairing symmetries. Our findings may facilitate the observation of Majorana modes bounded to the vortices in heterostructures with no need for a proximity-induced superconductivity and relatively large value of $Δ/E_F$.

cond-mat.supr-con↗

arXiv2019

Phase diagram and thermal Hall conductivity of spin-liquid Kekulé-Kitaev model

In this work we study the phase diagram of Kekulé-Kitaev model. The model is defined on a honeycomb lattice with bond dependent anisotropic exchange interactions making it exactly solvable in terms of Majorana representation of spins in close analogy to the Kitaev model. However, the energy spectrum of Majorana fermions has a multi-band structure characterized by Chern numbers 0, $\pm$1, and $\pm2$. We obtained the phase diagram of the model in the plane of exchange couplings and in the presence of a magnetic field and found chiral topological and trivial spin-liquid ground states. In the absence of magnetic field most part of the phase diagram is a trivial gapped phase continuously connected to an Abelian phase, while in the presence of the magnetic field a topological phase arises. Furthermore, motivated by recent thermal measurements on the spin-liquid candidate $α$-RuCl$_{3}$, we calculated the thermal Hall conductivity at different regimes of parameters and temperatures and found the latter is quantized over a wide range of temperatures.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2019

Optical Control of Chiral Charge Pumping in a Topological Weyl Semimetal

Solids with topologically robust electronic states exhibit unusual electronic and optical transport properties that do not exist in other materials. A particularly interesting example is chiral charge pumping, the so-called chiral anomaly, in recently discovered topological Weyl semimetals, where simultaneous application of parallel DC electric and magnetic fields creates an imbalance in the number of carriers of opposite topological charge (chirality). Here, using time-resolved terahertz measurements on the Weyl semimetal TaAs in a magnetic field, we optically interrogate the chiral anomaly by dynamically pumping the chiral charges and monitoring their subsequent relaxation. Theory based on Boltzmann transport shows that the observed effects originate from an optical nonlinearity in the chiral charge pumping process. Our measurements reveal that the chiral population relaxation time is much greater than 1 ns. The observation of terahertz-controlled chiral carriers with long coherence times and topological protection suggests the application of Weyl semimetals for quantum optoelectronic technology.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2019

Anomalous low-temperature enhancement of supercurrent in topological-insulator nanoribbon Josephson junctions: evidence for low-energy Andreev bound states

We report anomalous enhancement of the critical current at low temperatures in gate-tunable Josephson junctions made from topological insulator BiSbTeSe$_2$ nanoribbons with superconducting Nb electrodes. In contrast to conventional junctions, as a function of the decreasing temperature $T$, the increasing critical current $I_c$ exhibits a sharp upturn at a temperature $T_*$ around 20$\%$ of the junction critical temperatures for several different samples and various gate voltages. The $I_c$ vs. $T$ demonstrates a short junction behavior for $T>T_*$, but crosses over to a long junction behavior for $T<T_*$ with an exponential $T$-dependence $I_c \propto \exp\big(-k_B T/δ\big)$, where $k_B$ is the Boltzmann constant. The extracted characteristic energy-scale $δ$ is found to be an order of magnitude smaller than the induced superconducting gap of the junction. We attribute the long-junction behavior with such a small $δ$ to low-energy Andreev bound states (ABS) arising from winding of the electronic wavefunction around the circumference of the topological insulator nanoribbon (TINR). Our TINR-based Josephson junctions with low-energy ABS are promising for future topologically protected devices that may host exotic phenomena such as Majorana fermions.

cond-mat.supr-con↗

arXiv2019

Disorder and Zeeman coupling induced gap-filling states in the nodeless chiral superconducting Bi/Ni bilayer system

Motivated by the recently discovered time-reversal symmetry-breaking superconductivity in epitaxial Bi/Ni bilayer system with transition temperature $T_c\approx 4.2$K and the observation of zero-bias anomaly in tunneling measurements, we show that gap-filling states can appear in the fully gapped $d_{xy}\pm id_{x^2-y^2}$ superconducting states. We consider a model of helical electron states with d-wave pairing. In particular, we show that both magnetic and non-magnetic impurities can create states within the superconducting gap. Alternatively, we also show that the coupling of the electron spins to the in-plane Zeeman field provided by nickel can also create gap-filling states by producing Bogoliubov Fermi surfaces. Our findings may explain the origin of zero-bias anomaly observed in the point-contact tunneling measurements.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2018

Competing superconducting phases in interacting two-dimensional electron gas with strong Rashba spin-orbit coupling

In this work we study interacting electrons on square lattice in the presence of strong Rashba spin-orbit interaction. The spin-orbit term forces the time-reversal electron states to be paired in even Cooper channels. For concreteness, we only consider the repulsive onsite Hubbard and nearest-neighbor coulomb interactions, the so called extended Hubbard model. To examine the superconducting instability we obtain the effective interaction between electrons within the random phase approximation and treat the pairing instabilities driven by charge and spin fluctuations and their combined effects. We mapped out the phase diagram of the model in terms of interactions and electron fillings, and found that while the $d_{xy}$ and $d_{x^2-y^2}$ symmetries are the most likely pairing symmetries driven by charge and spin fluctuations, respectively, the strong effect of both fluctuations yields higher angular momentum Cooper instability. The possibility of topological superconductivity and triplet pairing is also discussed.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2018

Odd-frequency Pairing in the Edge States of Superconducting Pnictides in the Coexistence Phase with Antiferromagnetism

In several members of the pnictide materials, spin density wave order coexists with superconductivity over a range of dopings and temperature. In this paper we show that odd-frequency superconductivity emerges on the edges of pnictides in such a coexistence phase. In particular, the breaking of spin-rotation symmetry by SDW and translation symmetry by the edge can lead to the development of odd-frequency spin-triplet Cooper pairing on edges of superconducting pnictide samples. In this case, the odd-frequency pairing has even parity components, which are immune to disorder. Our results show that pnictides are a natural platform to realize odd frequency superconductivity, which is a new quantum phase and has been mainly searched for in heterostructures of magnetic and superconducting materials. The emergence of odd-frequency pairing on the edges and in the defects can be potentially detected in magnetic response measurements.

cond-mat.supr-con↗

arXiv2018

Dynamo Effect and Turbulence in Hydrodynamic Weyl Metals

The dynamo effect is a class of macroscopic phenomena responsible for generation and maintaining magnetic fields in astrophysical bodies. It hinges on hydrodynamic three-dimensional motion of conducting gases and plasmas that achieve high hydrodynamic and/or magnetic Reynolds numbers due to large length scales involved. The existing laboratory experiments modeling dynamos are challenging and involve large apparatuses containing conducting fluids subject to fast helical flows. Here we propose that electronic solid-state materials -- in particular, hydrodynamic metals -- may serve as an alternative platform to observe some aspects of the dynamo effect. Motivated by recent experimental developments, this paper focuses on hydrodynamic Weyl semimetals, where the dominant scattering mechanism is due to interactions. We derive Navier-Stokes equations along with equations of magneto-hydrodynamics that describe transport of Weyl electron-hole plasma appropriate in this regime. We estimate the hydrodynamic and magnetic Reynolds numbers for this system. The latter is a key figure of merit of the dynamo mechanism. We show that it can be relatively large to enable observation of the dynamo-induced magnetic field bootstrap in experiment. Finally, we generalize the simplest dynamo instability model -- Ponomarenko dynamo -- to the case of a hydrodynamic Weyl semimetal and show that the chiral anomaly term reduces the threshold magnetic Reynolds number for the dynamo instability.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2018

Deformation and Stability of Surface States in Dirac semimetals

The unusual surface states of topological semimetals have attracted a lot of attention. Recently, we showed [PNAS 113, 8648 (2016)] that for a Dirac semimetal (DSM) arising from band-inversion, such as Na$_3$Bi and Cd$_3$As$_2$, the expected double Fermi arcs on the surface are not topologically protected. Quite generally, the arcs deform into states similar to those on the surface of a strong topological insulator. Here we address two questions related to deformation and stability of surface states in DSMs. First, we discuss why certain perturbations, no matter how large, are unable to destroy the double Fermi arcs. We show that this is related to certain extra (particle-hole) symmetry, which is non-generic in materials. Second, we discuss situations in which the surface states are completely destroyed without breaking any symmetry or impacting the bulk Dirac nodes. We are not aware of any experimental or density functional theory (DFT) candidates for a material which is a bulk DSM without any surface states, but our results clearly show that this is possible.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2018

Infinite Projected Entangled-Pair State algorithm for ruby and triangle-honeycomb lattices

The infinite Projected Entangled-Pair State (iPEPS) algorithm is one of the most efficient techniques for studying the ground-state properties of two-dimensional quantum lattice Hamiltonians in the thermodynamic limit. Here, we show how the algorithm can be adapted to explore nearest-neighbor local Hamiltonians on the ruby and triangle-honeycomb lattices, using the Corner Transfer Matrix (CTM) renormalization group for 2D tensor network contraction. Additionally, we show how the CTM method can be used to calculate the ground state fidelity per lattice site and the boundary density operator and entanglement entropy (EE) on an infinite cylinder. As a benchmark, we apply the iPEPS method to the ruby model with anisotropic interactions and explore the ground-state properties of the system. We further extract the phase diagram of the model in different regimes of the couplings by measuring two-point correlators, ground state fidelity and EE on an infinite cylinder. Our phase diagram is in agreement with previous studies of the model by exact diagonalization.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2017

Time-Reversal-Symmetry-Breaking Superconductivity in Epitaxial Bismuth/Nickel Bilayers

Superconductivity that spontaneously breaks time-reversal symmetry (TRS) has been found, so far, only in a handful of 3D crystals with bulk inversion symmetry. Here we report an observation of spontaneous TRS breaking in a 2D superconducting system without inversion symmetry: the epitaxial bilayer films of bismuth and nickel. The evidence comes from the onset of the polar Kerr effect at the superconducting transition in the absence of an external magnetic field, detected by the ultrasensitive loop-less fiber-optic Sagnac interferometer. Because of strong spin-orbit interaction and lack of inversion symmetry in a Bi/Ni bilayer, superconducting pairing cannot be classified as singlet or triplet. We propose a theoretical model where magnetic fluctuations in Ni induce superconducting pairing of the dxy = +- idx^2y^2 orbital symmetry between the electrons in Bi. In this model the order parameter spontaneously breaks the TRS and has a non-zero phase winding number around the Fermi surface, thus making it a rare example of a 2D topological superconductor.

cond-mat.supr-con↗

arXiv2016

Topological spin liquids in the ruby lattice with anisotropic Kitaev interactions

The ruby lattice is a four-valent lattice interpolating between honeycomb and triangular lattices. In this work we investigate the topological spin-liquid phases of a spin Hamiltonian with Kitaev interactions on the ruby lattice using exact diagonalization and perturbative methods. The latter interactions combined with the structure of the lattice yield a model with $\mathbb{Z}_2 \times \mathbb{Z}_2$ gauge symmetry. We mapped out the phase digram of the model and found gapped and gapless spin-liquid phases. While the low energy sector of the gapped phase corresponds to the well-known topological color code model on a honeycomb lattice, the low-energy sector of the gapless phases is described by an effective spin model with three-body interactions on a triangular lattice. A gap is opened in the spectrum in a small magnetic field. We argue that the latter phases could be possibly described by exotic excitations, whose their spectrum is richer than the Ising phase of the Kitaev model.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2016

Amperean Pairing at the Surface of Topological Insulators

The surface of a 3D topological insulator is described by a helical electron state with the electron's spin and momentum locked together. We show that in the presence of ferromagnetic fluctuations the surface of a topological insulator is unstable towards a superconducting state with unusual pairing, dubbed Amperean pairing. The key idea is that the dynamical fluctuations of a ferromagnetic layer deposited on the surface of a topological insulator couple to the electrons as gauge fields. The transverse components of the magnetic gauge fields are unscreened and can mediate an effective interaction between electrons. There is an attractive interaction between electrons with momenta in the same direction which makes the pairing to be of Amperean type. We show that this attractive interaction leads to a $p$-wave pairing instability of the Fermi surface in the Cooper channel.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2016

Are the double Fermi arcs of Dirac semimetals topologically protected?

Motivated by recent experiments probing anomalous surface states of Dirac semimetals (DSMs) Na$_3$Bi and Cd$_3$As$_2$, we raise the question posed in the title. We find that, in marked contrast to Weyl semimetals, the gapless surface states of DSMs are not topologically protected in general, except on time-reversal-invariant planes of surface Brillouin zone. We first demonstrate this in a minimal $4$-band model with a pair of Dirac nodes at ${\bf k}=(0,0,\pm Q)$, where gapless states on the side surfaces are protected only near $k_z=0$. We then validate our conclusions about the absence of a topological invariant protecting double Fermi arcs in DSMs using a K-theory analysis for space groups of Na$_3$Bi and Cd$_3$As$_2$. Generically, the arcs deform into a Fermi pocket, similar to {the surface states of a topological insulator (TI), and this can merge into the} projection of bulk Dirac Fermi surfaces as the chemical potential is varied. We make sharp predictions for the doping-dependence of the surface states of a DSM that can be tested by ARPES and quantum oscillation experiments.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2015

Theory of Kerr and Faraday rotations and linear dichroism in Topological Weyl Semimetals

We consider the electromagnetic response of a topological Weyl semimetal (TWS) with a pair of Weyl nodes in the bulk and corresponding Fermi arcs in the surface Brillouin zone. We compute the frequency-dependent complex conductivities $σ_{αβ}(ω)$ and also take into account the modification of Maxwell equations by the topological $θ$-term to obtain the Kerr and Faraday rotations in a variety of geometries. For TWS films thinner than the wavelength, the Kerr and Faraday rotations, determined by the separation between Weyl nodes, are significantly larger than in topological insulators. In thicker films, the Kerr and Faraday angles can be enhanced by choice of film thickness and substrate refractive index. We show that, for radiation incident on a surface with Fermi arcs, there is no Kerr or Faraday rotation but the electric field develops a longitudinal component inside the TWS, and there is magnetic linear dichroism. Our results have implications for probing the TWS phase in various experimental systems.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2013

Quantum phase transitions out of a Z2 x Z2 topological phase

We investigate the low-energy spectral properties and robustness of the topological phase of color code, which is a quantum spin model for the aim of fault-tolerant quantum computation, in the presence of a uniform magnetic field or Ising interactions, using high-order series expansion and exact diagonalization. In a uniform magnetic field, we find 1st-order phase transitions in all field directions. In contrast, our results for the Ising interactions unveil that for strong enough Ising couplings, the Z2 x Z2 topological phase of color code breaks down to symmetry broken phases by 1st- or 2nd-order phase transitions.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2013

Multi-orbital Effects on Thermoelectric Properties of Strongly Correlated Materials

The effects of electronic correlations and orbital degeneracy on thermoelectric properties are studied within the context of multi-orbital Hubbard models on different lattices. We use dynamical mean field theory with iterative perturbation theory as a solver to calculate the self-energy of the models in wide range of interaction strengths. The Seebeck coefficient, which measures the voltage drop in response to a temperature gradient across the system, shows a non-monotonic behavior with temperatures in the presence of strong correlations. This anomalous behavior is associated with a crossover from a Fermi liquid metal at low temperatures to a bad metal with incoherent excitations at high temperatures. We find that for interactions comparable to the bandwidth the Seebeck coefficient acquires large values at low temperatures. Moreover, for strongly correlated cases, where the interaction is larger than the band width, the figure of merit is enhanced over a wide range of temperatures because of decreasing electronic contributions to the thermal conductivity. We also find that multi-orbital systems will typically yield larger thermopower compared to single orbital models.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2013

Heterointerface engineered electronic and magnetic phases of NdNiO3 thin films

Mott physics is characterized by an interaction-driven metal-to-insulator transition in a partially filled band. In the resulting insulating state, antiferromagnetic orders of the local moments typically develop, but in rare situations no long-range magnetic order appears, even at zero temperature, rendering the system a quantum spin liquid. A fundamental and technologically critical question is whether one can tune the underlying energetic landscape to control both metal-to-insulator and Néel transitions, and even stabilize latent metastable phases, ideally on a platform suitable for applications. Here we demonstrate how to achieve this in ultrathin films of NdNiO3 with various degrees of lattice mismatch, and report on the quantum critical behaviours not reported in the bulk by transport measurements and resonant X-ray spectroscopy/scattering. In particular, on the decay of the antiferromagnetic Mott insulating state into a non-Fermi liquid, we find evidence of a quantum metal-to-insulator transition that spans a non-magnetic insulating phase.

cond-mat.str-el↗