arXiv subjects

Omid Tavakol

Publications and source records attributed to Omid Tavakol.

11 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2025

Pairing around a Single Dirac Point: A Unifying View of Kohn-Luttinger Superconductivity in Chern Bands, Quarter Metals, and Topological Surface States

Superconductivity of a single two-dimensional Dirac fermion offers a natural route to topological superconductivity. While usually considered extrinsic -- arising from proximity to a conventional superconductor -- we investigate when a doped Dirac cone can \emph{spontaneously} develop superconductivity from a short-range repulsive interaction $U$ via the Kohn--Luttinger mechanism. We show that an ideal, linear Dirac cone is immune to pairing at leading order in $U^2$. Superconductivity instead emerges only through higher-order in $k$ corrections to the dispersion, which are unavoidable in any lattice realization and crucially dictate the pairing symmetry. The form of the pairing thus reflects how the well-known obstruction to realizing a single Dirac cone on a lattice is circumvented. When a Dirac cone arises from broken time-reversal symmetry -- for instance, at a transition between Chern insulators or in a valley-polarized phase -- we find a topological $p - ip$ state whose chirality is opposite to that of the parent chiral metal above $T_c$. By contrast, for a surface Dirac cone of a 3D topological insulator, superconductivity is stabilized by anisotropies in the dispersion. For $C_{3v}$-symmetric warping, as in \ce{Bi2Te3}, pairing is strongest when the Fermi surface becomes hexagonal, leading to order in the $(d \pm id)\times(p+ip)$ channel with accidental near-nodes. In the highly anisotropic limit $v_x \gg v_y$, relevant to side surfaces of layered materials, the Fermi surface splits into two branches, and nesting favors a pairing symmetry $\Delta \sim \mathrm{sgn}(k_x)\cos(k_y)$ reminiscent of organic superconductors.

cond-mat.supr-con↗

arXiv2024

Theory of non-linear diffusion with a physical gapped mode

In a system with one conserved charge the charge diffusion is modified by non-linear self-interactions within an effective field theory (EFT) of diffusive fluctuations. We include the slowest ultraviolet (UV) mode, constructing a UV-regulated EFT. The relaxation time of this UV mode is protected from renormalization, as supported by experimental data in a bad metal system. Furthermore, the retarded density-density Green's function acquires four branch points, eventually increasing the range of applicability. We discuss the fate of long-time-tails as well as implications for the quark gluon plasma.

hep-th↗

arXiv2023

Minimal model for the flat bands in copper-substituted lead phosphate apatite: Strong diamagnetism from multi-orbital physics

The claims that a copper-substituted lead apatite, denoted as CuPb$_9$(PO$_4$)$_6$OH$_2$, could be a room-temperature superconductor have led to an intense research activity. While other research groups did not confirm these claims, and the hope of realizing superconductivity in this compound has all but vanished, other findings have emerged which motivate further work on this material. In fact, Density Functional Theory (DFT) calculations indicate the presence of two nearly flat bands near the Fermi level, which are known to host strongly correlated physics. In order to facilitate the theoretical study of the intriguing physics associated with these two flat bands, we propose a minimal tight-binding model which reproduces their main features. We then calculate the orbital magnetic susceptibility of our two-band model and find a large diamagnetic response which arises due to the multi-orbital nature of the bands and which could provide an explanation for the strong diamagnetism reported in experiments.

cond-mat.supr-con↗

arXiv2023

Hidden Critical Points in the Two-Dimensional $O(n>2)$ model: Exact Numerical Study of a Complex Conformal Field Theory

The presence of nearby conformal field theories (CFTs) hidden in the complex plane of the tuning parameter was recently proposed as an elegant explanation for the ubiquity of "weakly first-order" transitions in condensed matter and high-energy systems. In this work, we perform an exact microscopic study of such a complex CFT (CCFT) in the two-dimensional $O(n)$ loop model. The well-known absence of symmetry-breaking of the $O(n>2)$ model is understood as arising from the displacement of the non-trivial fixed points into the complex temperature plane. Thanks to a numerical finite-size study of the transfer matrix, we confirm the presence of a CCFT in the complex plane and extract the real and imaginary parts of the central charge and scaling dimensions. By comparing those with the analytic continuation of predictions from Coulomb gas techniques, we determine the range of validity of the analytic continuation to extend up to $n_g \approx 12.34$, beyond which the CCFT gives way to a gapped state. Finally, we propose a beta function which reproduces the main features of the phase diagram and which suggests an interpretation of the CCFT as a liquid-gas critical point at the end of a first-order transition line.

cond-mat.stat-mech↗

arXiv2023

Electric field control of a quantum spin liquid in weak Mott insulators

The triangular lattice Hubbard model at strong coupling, whose effective spin model contains both Heisenberg and ring exchange interactions, exhibits a rich phase diagram as the ratio of the hopping $t$ to onsite Coulomb repulsion $U$ is tuned. This includes a chiral spin liquid (CSL) phase. Nevertheless, this exotic phase remains challenging to realize experimentally because a given material has a fixed value of $t/U$ that can difficultly be tuned with external stimuli. One approach to address this problem is applying a DC electric field, which renormalizes the exchange interactions as electrons undergo virtual hopping processes; in addition to creating virtual doubly occupied sites, electrons must overcome electric potential energy differences. Performing a small $t/U$ expansion to fourth order, we derive the ring exchange model in the presence of an electric field and find that it not only introduces spatial anisotropy but also tends to enhance the ring exchange term compared to the dominant nearest-neighbor Heisenberg interaction. Thus, increasing the electric field serves as a way to increase the importance of the ring exchange at constant $t/U$. Through density matrix renormalization group calculations, we compute the ground state phase diagram of the ring exchange model for two different electric field directions. In both cases, we find that the electric field shifts the phase boundary of the CSL towards a smaller ratio of $t/U$. Therefore, the electric field can drive a magnetically ordered state into the CSL. This explicit demonstration opens the door to tuning other quantum spin systems into spin liquid phases via the application of an electric field.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2023

Pairing Instabilities of the Yukawa-SYK Models with Controlled Fermion Incoherence

The interplay of non-Fermi liquid and superconductivity born out of strong dynamical interactions is at the heart of the physics of unconventional superconductivity. As a solvable platform of the strongly correlated superconductors, we study the pairing instabilities of the Yukawa-Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (Yukawa-SYK) model, which describes spin-1/2 fermions coupled to bosons by the random, all-to-all, spin-independent and dependent Yukawa interactions. In contrast to the previously studied models, the random Yukawa couplings are sampled from a collection of Gaussian ensembles whose variances follow a continuous distribution rather than being fixed to a constant. By tuning the analytic behaviour of the distribution, we could control the fermion incoherence to systematically examine various normal states ranging from the Fermi liquid to non-Fermi liquids that are different from the conformal solution of the SYK model with a constant variance. Using the linearised Eliashberg theory, we show that the onset of the unconventional spin-triplet pairing is preferred with the spin-dependent interactions while all pairing channels show instabilities with the spin-independent interactions. Although the interactions shorten the lifetime of the fermions in the non-Fermi liquid, the same interactions also dress the bosons to strengthen the tendency to pair the incoherent fermions. As a consequence, the onset temperature $T_c$ of the pairing is enhanced in the non-Fermi liquid compared to the case of the Fermi liquid.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2022

Nonlinear optical responses in nodal line semimetals

Shift current and second harmonic generation (SHG) are nonlinear optical responses that are often used for photovoltaic effect and the detection of subtle symmetry breaking patterns in materials. It has been recently shown that topological semimetals such as Weyl semimetals with broken inversion symmetry can generate large nonlinear optical responses. In this paper, we investigate both shift current and SHG in a class of topological nodal line semimetal (NLSM) systems with broken inversion symmetry, which may arise intrinsically or via an applied electric field. It is shown that certain classes of NLSM systems offer more singular shift current and SHG in comparison to the well-known Weyl semimetal systems.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2021

Variational wavefunctions for Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev models

Given a class of $q$-local Hamiltonians, is it possible to find a simple variational state whose energy is a finite fraction of the ground state energy in the thermodynamic limit? Whereas product states often provide an affirmative answer in the case of bosonic (or qubit) models, we show that Gaussian states fail dramatically in the fermionic case, like for the Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK) models. This prompts us to propose a new class of wavefunctions for SYK models inspired by the variational coupled cluster algorithm. We introduce a static ("0+0D") large-$N$ field theory to study the energy, two-point correlators, and entanglement properties of these states. Most importantly, we demonstrate a finite disorder-averaged approximation ratio of $r \approx 0.62$ between the variational and ground state energy of SYK for $q=4$. Moreover, the variational states provide an exact description of spontaneous symmetry breaking in a related two-flavor SYK model.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2020

Artificial electric field and electron hydrodynamics

In the electron dynamics in quantum matter, the Berry curvature of the electronic wave function provides the artificial magnetic field (AMF) in momentum space, which leads to non-trivial contributions to transport coefficients. It is known that in the presence of electron-electron and/or electron-phonon interactions, there is an extra contribution to the electron dynamics due to the artificial electric field (AEF) in momentum space. In this work, we construct hydrodynamic equations for the electrons in time-reversal invariant but inversion-breaking systems and find the novel hydrodynamic coefficients related to the AEF. Furthermore, we investigate the novel linear and non-linear transport coefficients in presence of the AEF.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2019

Magneto-Transport in a Chiral Fluid from Kinetic Theory

We argue that in order to study the magneto-transport in a relativistic Weyl fluid, it is needed to take into account the associated quantum corrections, namely the side-jump effect, at least to second order. To this end, we impose Lorentz invariance to a system of free Weyl fermions in the presence of the magnetic field and find the second order correction to the energy dispersion. By developing a scheme to compute the integrals in the phase space, we show that the mentioned correction has non-trivial effects on the thermodynamics of the system. Specifically, we predict the form of the negative magnetoresistance in the system from the enthalpy density in equilibrium. Then in analogy with Weyl semimetal, in the framework of the chiral kinetic theory and under the relaxation time approximation, we explicitly compute the magneto-conductivities, at low temperature limit ($T\ll μ$). We show that the conductivities obey the set of Ward identities which follow from the generating functional including the Chern-Simons part.

hep-th↗

arXiv2019

Magneto-transport in an anomalous fluid with weakly broken symmetries, in weak and strong regime

We consider a general system with weakly broken time and translation symmetries. We assume the system also possesses a $U(1)$ symmetry which is not only weakly broken, but is anomalous. We use the second order chiral quasi-hydrodynamics to compute the magneto-conductivities in the system in the presence of a weak magnetic field. Analogous to electrical and thermoelectric conductivities, it turns out that the thermal conductivity is identified with a coefficient which depends on the mixed gauge-gravitational anomaly. By applying our general formulas to a free system of Weyl fermions at low temperature limit $T\ll μ$, we find that our system is Onsager reciprocal if the relaxation in all energy, momentum and charge channels occurs at the same rate. In the high temperature limit $T\gg μ$, we consider a strongly coupled $SU(N_c)$ gauge theory with $N_c\gg1$ in the hydrodynamic limit. Its gravity dual is a magnetized charged brane to which, we apply our formulas and compute the conductivities. On the way, we show that analogous to the weak regime, an energy cut-off emerges to regulate the thermodynamic quantities. From this gravity background we also find the coefficients of chiral magnetic effect in agreement with the well-known result of the Son-Surowka.

hep-th↗