arXiv subjects

Michael A. Sentef

Publications and source records attributed to Michael A. Sentef.

At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv2023

Edge and corner skin effects of chirally coupled magnons characterized by a topological winding tuple

We investigate a long-ranged coupled and non-Hermitian two-dimensional array of nanomagnets, fabricated on a thin magnetic substrate and subjected to an in-plane magnetic field. We predict topology-driven edge and corner skin effects of magnetic eigenmodes with the localization position at boundaries precisely characterized by a topological winding tuple $({\cal W}_1,{\cal W}_2)$. By varying the direction of the in-plane field, all magnon states pile up either at different edges of the array with $({\cal W}_1=\pm 1,{\cal W}_2=0)$ or $({\cal W}_1=0,{\cal W}_2=\pm 1)$, or at different corners characterized by $({\cal W}_1=\pm 1,{\cal W}_2=\pm 1)$. Exploiting the non-Hermitian topology is potentially helpful for designing useful magnonic metasurface in the future.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2023

Theory of resonantly enhanced photo-induced superconductivity

Optical driving of materials has emerged as a versatile tool to control their properties, with photo-induced superconductivity being among the most fascinating examples. In this work, we show that light or lattice vibrations coupled to an electronic interband transition naturally give rise to electron-electron attraction that may be enhanced when the underlying boson is driven into a non-thermal state. We find this phenomenon to be resonantly amplified when tuning the boson's frequency close to the energy difference between the two electronic bands. This result offers a simple microscopic mechanism for photo-induced superconductivity and provides a recipe for designing new platforms in which light-induced superconductivity can be realized. We propose a concrete setup consisting of a graphene-hBN-SrTiO$_3$ heterostructure, for which we estimate a superconducting $T_{\rm c}$ that may be achieved upon driving the system.

cond-mat.supr-con↗

arXiv2023

Theory of nematic charge orders in kagome metals

Kagome metals $A$V$_3$Sb$_5$ ($A=$K, Rb, Cs) exhibit an exotic charge order (CO), involving three order parameters, with broken translation and time-reversal symmetries compatible with the presence of orbital currents. The properties of this phase are still intensely debated, and it is unclear if the origin of the CO is mainly due to electron-electron or electron-phonon interactions. Most of the experimental studies confirm the nematicity of this state, a feature that might be enhanced by electronic correlations. However, it is still unclear whether the nematic CO becomes stable at a temperature equal to ($T_{\text{nem}} = T_\text{C}$) or lower than ($T_{\text{nem}} < T_\text{C}$) the one of the CO itself. Here, we systematically characterize several CO configurations, some proposed for the new member of the family ScV$_6$Sn$_6$, by combining phenomenological Ginzburg-Landau theories, valid irrespective of the specific ordering mechanism, with mean-field analysis. We find a few configurations for the CO that are in agreement with most of the experimental findings to date and that are described by different Ginzburg-Landau potentials. We propose to use resonant ultrasound spectroscopy to experimentally characterize the order parameters of the CO, such as the number of their components and their relative amplitude, and provide an analysis of the corresponding elastic tensors. This might help understand which mean-field configuration found in our study is the most representative for describing the CO state of kagome metals, and it can provide information regarding the nematicity onset temperature $T_\text{nem}$ with respect to $T_\text{C}$.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2023

Witnessing nonequilibrium entanglement dynamics in a strongly correlated fermionic chain

Many-body entanglement in condensed matter systems can be diagnosed from equilibrium response functions through the use of entanglement witnesses and operator-specific quantum bounds. Here, we investigate the applicability of this approach for detecting entangled states in quantum systems driven out of equilibrium. We use a multipartite entanglement witness, the quantum Fisher information, to study the dynamics of a paradigmatic fermion chain undergoing a time-dependent change of the Coulomb interaction. Our results show that the quantum Fisher information is able to witness distinct signatures of multipartite entanglement both near and far from equilibrium that are robust against decoherence. We discuss implications of these findings for probing entanglement in light-driven quantum materials with time-resolved optical and x-ray scattering methods.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2022

Can neural quantum states learn volume-law ground states?

We study whether neural quantum states based on multi-layer feed-forward networks can find ground states which exhibit volume-law entanglement entropy. As a testbed, we employ the paradigmatic Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev model. We find that both shallow and deep feed-forward networks require an exponential number of parameters in order to represent the ground state of this model. This demonstrates that sufficiently complicated quantum states, although being physical solutions to relevant models and not pathological cases, can still be difficult to learn to the point of intractability at larger system sizes. This highlights the importance of further investigations into the physical properties of quantum states amenable to an efficient neural representation.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2022

Cavity Light-Matter Entanglement through Quantum Fluctuations

The hybridization between light and matter forms the basis to achieve cavity control over quantum materials. In this work we investigate a cavity coupled to an XXZ quantum chain of interacting spinless fermions by numerically exact solutions and perturbative analytical expansions. We find two important effects: (i) Specific quantum fluctuations of the matter system play a pivotal role in achieving entanglement between light and matter; and (ii) in turn, light-matter entanglement is the key ingredient to modify electronic properties by the cavity. We hypothesize that quantum fluctuations of those matter operators to which the cavity modes couple are a general prerequisite for light-matter entanglement in the groundstate. Implications of our findings for light-matter-entangled phases, cavity-modified phase transitions in correlated systems, and measurement of light-matter entanglement through Kubo response functions are discussed.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2022

Symmetry breaking and spectral structure of the interacting Hatano-Nelson model

We study the Hatano-Nelson model, i.e., a one-dimensional non-Hermitian chain of spinless fermions with nearest-neighbour nonreciprocal hopping, in the presence of repulsive nearest-neighbour interactions. At half filling, we find two $\mathcal{PT}$ transitions, as the interaction strength increases. The first transition is marked by an exceptional point between the first and the second excited state in a finite-size system and is a first-order symmetry-breaking transition into a charge-density wave regime. Persistent currents characteristic of the Hatano-Nelson model abruptly vanish at the transition. The second transition happens at a critical interaction strength that scales with the system size and can thus only be observed in finite-size systems. It is characterized by a collapse of all energy eigenvalues onto the real axis. We further show that in a strong interaction regime, but away from half filling, the many-body spectrum shows point gaps with nontrivial winding numbers, akin to the topological properties of the single-particle spectrum of the Hatano-Nelson chain, which indicates the skin effect of extensive many-body eigenstates under open boundary conditions. Our results can be applied to other models such as the non-Hermitian Su-Schrieffer-Heeger-type model and contribute to an understanding of fermionic many-body systems with non-Hermitian Hamiltonians.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2022

Direct optical probe of magnon topology in two-dimensional quantum magnets

Controlling edge states of topological magnon insulators is a promising route to stable spintronics devices. However, to experimentally ascertain the topology of magnon bands is a challenging task. Here we derive a fundamental relation between the light-matter coupling and the quantum geometry of magnon states. This allows to establish the two-magnon Raman circular dichroism as an optical probe of magnon topology in honeycomb magnets, in particular of the Chern number and the topological gap. Our results pave the way for interfacing light and topological magnons in functional quantum devices.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2022

Quantum Floquet engineering with an exactly solvable tight-binding chain in a cavity

Recent experimental advances enable the manipulation of quantum matter by exploiting the quantum nature of light. However, paradigmatic exactly solvable models, such as the Dicke, Rabi or Jaynes-Cummings models for quantum-optical systems, are scarce in the corresponding solid-state, quantum materials context. Focusing on the long-wavelength limit for the light, here, we provide such an exactly solvable model given by a tight-binding chain coupled to a single cavity mode via a quantized version of the Peierls substitution. We show that perturbative expansions in the light-matter coupling have to be taken with care and can easily lead to a false superradiant phase. Furthermore, we provide an analytical expression for the groundstate in the thermodynamic limit, in which the cavity photons are squeezed by the light-matter coupling. In addition, we derive analytical expressions for the electronic single-particle spectral function and optical conductivity. We unveil quantum Floquet engineering signatures in these dynamical response functions, such as analogs to dynamical localization and replica side bands, complementing paradigmatic classical Floquet engineering results. Strikingly, the Drude weight in the optical conductivity of the electrons is partially suppressed by the presence of a single cavity mode through an induced electron-electron interaction.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2022

Polaritonic Hofstadter Butterfly and Cavity-Control of the Quantized Hall Conductance

In a previous work [Phys. Rev. Lett. 123, 047202 (2019)] a translationally invariant framework called quantum-electrodynamical Bloch (QED-Bloch) theory was introduced for the description of periodic materials in homogeneous magnetic fields and strongly coupled to the quantized photon field in the optical limit. For such systems, we show that QED-Bloch theory predicts the existence of fractal polaritonic spectra as a function of the cavity coupling strength. In addition, for the energy spectrum as a function of the relative magnetic flux we find that a terahertz cavity can modify the standard Hofstadter butterfly. In the limit of no quantized photon field, QED-Bloch theory captures the well-known fractal spectrum of the Hofstadter butterfly and can be used for the description of 2D materials in strong magnetic fields, which are of great experimental interest. As a further application, we consider Landau levels under cavity confinement and show that the cavity alters the quantized Hall conductance and that the Hall plateaus are modified as $σ_{xy}=e^2ν/h(1+η^2)$ by the light-matter coupling $η$. Most of the aforementioned phenomena should be experimentally accessible and corresponding implications are discussed.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2022

Nonequilibrium phase transition in a driven-dissipative quantum antiferromagnet

A deeper theoretical understanding of driven-dissipative interacting systems and their nonequilibrium phase transitions is essential both to advance our fundamental physics understanding and to harness technological opportunities arising from optically controlled quantum many-body states. This paper provides a numerical study of dynamical phases and the transitions between them in the nonequilibrium steady state of the prototypical two-dimensional Heisenberg antiferromagnet with drive and dissipation. We demonstrate a nonthermal transition that is characterized by a qualitative change in the magnon distribution, from subthermal at low drive to a generalized Bose-Einstein form including a nonvanishing condensate fraction at high drive. A finite-size analysis reveals static and dynamical critical scaling at the transition, with a discontinuous slope of the magnon number versus driving field strength and critical slowing down at the transition point. Implications for experiments on quantum materials and polariton condensates are discussed.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2022

Cavity engineering of Hubbard $U$ via phonon polaritons

Pump-probe experiments have suggested the possibility to control electronic correlations by driving infrared-active phonons with resonant midinfrared laser pulses. In this work we study two possible microscopic nonlinear electron-phonon interactions behind these observations, namely coupling of the squared lattice displacement either to the electronic density or to the double occupancy. We investigate whether photon-phonon coupling to quantized light in an optical cavity enables similar control over electronic correlations. We first show that inside a dark cavity electronic interactions increase, ruling out the possibility that $T_c$ in superconductors can be enhanced via effectively decreased electron-electron repulsion through nonlinear electron-phonon coupling in a cavity. We further find that upon driving the cavity, electronic interactions decrease. Two different regimes emerge: (i) a strong coupling regime where the phonons show a delayed response at a time proportional to the inverse coupling strength, and (ii) an ultra-strong coupling regime where the response is immediate when driving the phonon polaritons resonantly. We further identify a distinctive feature in the electronic spectral function when electrons couple to phonon polaritons involving an infrared-active phonon mode, namely the splitting of the shake-off band into three bands. This could potentially be observed by angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2022

Cavity Quantum Materials

The emergent field of cavity quantum materials bridges collective many-body phenomena in solid-state platforms with strong light-matter coupling in cavity quantum electrodynamics (cavity QED). This brief review provides an overview of the state of the art of cavity platforms and highlights recent theoretical proposals and first experimental demonstrations of cavity control of collective phenomena in quantum materials. This encompasses light-matter coupling between electrons and cavity modes, cavity superconductivity, cavity phononics and ferroelectricity, correlated systems in a cavity, light-magnon coupling, cavity topology and the quantum Hall effect, as well as superradiance. An outlook of potential future developments is given.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2021

Role of stochastic noise and generalization error in the time propagation of neural-network quantum states

Neural-network quantum states (NQS) have been shown to be a suitable variational ansatz to simulate out-of-equilibrium dynamics in two-dimensional systems using time-dependent variational Monte Carlo (t-VMC). In particular, stable and accurate time propagation over long time scales has been observed in the square-lattice Heisenberg model using the Restricted Boltzmann machine architecture. However, achieving similar performance in other systems has proven to be more challenging. In this article, we focus on the two-leg Heisenberg ladder driven out of equilibrium by a pulsed excitation as a benchmark system. We demonstrate that unmitigated noise is strongly amplified by the nonlinear equations of motion for the network parameters, which causes numerical instabilities in the time evolution. As a consequence, the achievable accuracy of the simulated dynamics is a result of the interplay between network expressiveness and measures required to remedy these instabilities. We show that stability can be greatly improved by appropriate choice of regularization. This is particularly useful as tuning of the regularization typically imposes no additional computational cost. Inspired by machine learning practice, we propose a validation-set based diagnostic tool to help determining optimal regularization hyperparameters for t-VMC based propagation schemes. For our benchmark, we show that stable and accurate time propagation can be achieved in regimes of sufficiently regularized variational dynamics.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2021

Direct detection of odd-frequency superconductivity via time- and angle-resolved photoelectron fluctuation spectroscopy

We propose a measurement scheme to directly detect odd-frequency superconductivity via time- and angle-resolved photoelectron fluctuation spectroscopy. The scheme includes two consecutive, non-overlapping probe pulses applied to a superconducting sample. The photoemitted electrons are collected in a momentum-resolved fashion. Correlations between signals with opposite momenta are analyzed. Remarkably, these correlations are directly proportional to the absolute square of the time-ordered anomalous Green's function of the superconductor. This setup allows for the direct detection of the "hidden order parameter" of odd-frequency pairing. We illustrate this general scheme by analyzing the signal for the prototypical case of a two-band superconductor.

cond-mat.supr-con↗

arXiv2021

Nematicity Arising from a Chiral Superconducting Ground State in Magic-Angle Twisted Bilayer Graphene under In-Plane Magnetic Fields

Recent measurements of the resistivity in magic-angle twisted bilayer graphene near the superconducting transition temperature show two-fold anisotropy, or nematicity, when changing the direction of an in-plane magnetic field [Cao \textit{et al.}, Science \textbf{372}, 264 (2021)]. This was interpreted as strong evidence for exotic nematic superconductivity instead of the widely proposed chiral superconductivity. Counter-intuitively, we demonstrate that in two-dimensional chiral superconductors the in-plane magnetic field can hybridize the two chiral superconducting order parameters to induce a phase that shows nematicity in the transport response. Its paraconductivity is modulated as $\cos(2θ_{\bf B})$, with $θ_{\bf B}$ being the direction of the in-plane magnetic field, consistent with experiment in twisted bilayer graphene. We therefore suggest that the nematic response reported by Cao \textit{et al.} does not rule out a chiral superconducting ground state.

cond-mat.supr-con↗

arXiv2021

All-Optical Generation of Antiferromagnetic Magnon Currents via the Magnon Circular Photogalvanic Effect

We introduce the magnon circular photogalvanic effect enabled by stimulated Raman scattering. This provides an all-optical pathway to the generation of directed magnon currents with circularly polarized light in honeycomb antiferromagnetic insulators. The effect is the leading order contribution to magnon photocurrent generation via optical fields. Control of the magnon current by the polarization and angle of incidence of the laser is demonstrated. Experimental detection by sizeable inverse spin Hall voltages in platinum contacts is proposed.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2021

Theory of subcycle time-resolved photoemission: application to terahertz photodressing in graphene

Motivated by recent experimental progress we revisit the theory of pump-probe time- and angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (trARPES), which is one of the most powerful techniques to trace transient pump-driven modifications of the electronic properties. The pump-induced dynamics can be described in different gauges for the light-matter interaction. Standard minimal coupling leads to the velocity gauge, defined by linear coupling to the vector potential. In the context of tight-binding (TB) models, the Peierls substitution is the commonly employed scheme for single-band models. Multi-orbital extensions -- including the coupling of the dipole moments to the electric field -- have been introduced and tested recently. In this work, we derive the theory of time-resolved photoemission within both gauges from the perspective of nonequilibrium Green's functions. This approach naturally incorporates the photoelectron continuum, which allows for a direct calculation of the observable photocurrent. Following this route we introduce gauge-invariant expressions for the time-resolved photoemission signal. The theory is applied to graphene pumped with short terahertz pulses, which we treat within a first-principles TB model. We investigate the gauge invariance and discuss typical effects observed in subcycle time-resolved photoemission. Our formalism is an ideal starting point for realistic trARPES simulations including scattering effects.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗