arXiv subjects

Patrick A. Lee

Publications and source records attributed to Patrick A. Lee.

At least 109 records · Page 6Linked to original sources

arXiv2012

Topological Superconductivity and Majorana Fermions in Metallic Surface-States

Heavy metals, such as Au, Ag, and Pb, often have sharp surface states that are split by strong Rashba spin-orbit coupling. The strong spin-orbit coupling and two-dimensional nature of these surface states make them ideal platforms for realizing topological superconductivity and Majorana fermions. In this paper, we further develop a proposal to realize Majorana fermions at the ends of quasi-one-dimensional metallic wires. We show how superconductivity can be induced on the metallic surface states by a combination of proximity effect, disorder, and interactions. Applying a magnetic field along the wire can drive the wire into a topologically non-trivial state with Majorana end-states. Unlike the case of a perpendicular field, where the chemical potential must be fined tuned near the Rashba-band crossing, the parallel field allows one to realize Majoranas for arbitrarily large chemical potential. We then show that, despite the presence of a large carrier density from the bulk metal, it is still possible to effectively control the chemical potential of the surface states by gating. The simplest version of our proposal, which involves only an Au(111) film deposited on a conventional superconductor, should be readily realizable.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2011

Unified Formalism for calculating Polarization, Magnetization, and more in a Periodic Insulator

In this paper, we propose a unified formalism, using Green's functions, to integrate out the electrons in an insulator under uniform electromagnetic fields. We derive a perturbative formula for the Green's function in the presence of uniform magnetic or electric fields. Applying the formula, we derive the formula for the polarization, the orbital magnetization, and the orbital magneto-polarizability, without assuming time reversal symmetry. Specifically, we realize that the terms linear in the electric field can only be expressed in terms of the Green's functions in one extra dimension. This observation directly leads to the result that the coefficient of the $θ$ term in any dimensions is given by a Wess-Zumino-Witten-type term, integrated in the extended space, interpolating between the original physical Brillouin zone and a trivial system, with the group element replaced by the Green's function. This generalizes an earlier result for the case of time reversal invariance [see Z. Wang, X.-L. Qi, and S.-C. Zhang, Phys. Rev. Lett. {\bf 105}, 256803 (2010)].

cond-mat.other↗

arXiv2011

Proposal for detecting spin-chirality terms in Mott insulators via resonant inelastic x-ray scattering

We consider the question of whether resonant inelastic x-ray scattering (RIXS) can be used to detect many-body excitations that are coupled to the spin-chirality terms S_i . (S_j x S_k) in a Mott insulator. We find that while the spin-chirality terms are in general absent in the usual experimental setups of RIXS, there are prospects of realizing such terms if one considers instead the scattering near a pre-edge. We then perform detailed analyses for the square and the kagome lattices, and brief analyses for the triangular and the honeycomb lattices, in which we show that the spin-chirality terms are indeed present in all the above lattices, but that they occur at a higher order in our expansion for the kagome and the honeycomb lattices. The merit of using RIXS in addition to Raman spectroscopy to detect excitations that are coupled to the spin-chirality terms is also briefly discussed in the context of the emergent gauge boson in the U(1) Dirac spin liquid.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2011

Exotic S=1 spin liquid state with fermionic excitations on triangular lattice

Motivated by recent experiments on the material Ba_3NiSb_2O_9 we consider a spin-one quantum antiferromagnet on a triangular lattice with the Heisenberg bilinear and biquadratic exchange interactions and a single-ion anisotropy. Using a fermionic "triplon" representation for spins, we study the phase diagram within mean field theory. In addition to a fully gapped spin-liquid ground state, we find a state where one gapless triplon mode with Fermi surface coexists with d + id topological pairing of the other triplons. Despite the existence of a Fermi surface, this ground state has fully gapped bulk spin excitations. Such a state has linear in temperature specific heat and constant in plane spin susceptibility, with an unusually high Wilson ratio.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2011

Erratum: Engineering a p+ip Superconductor: Comparison of Topological Insulator and Rashba Spin-Orbit Coupled Materials [Phys. Rev. B 83, 184520 (2011)]

In this erratum, we revisit the issue of bulk-disorder on proposals to realize an effective p+ip superconductor from spin-orbit coupled materials. Contrary to the claim in [Phys. Rev. B 83, 184520 (2011)], we show that the pair breaking effects of bulk-disorder are negligible, and that bulk disorder does not suppress the induced superconductivity. This argument does not apply to our conclusions regarding impurities residing in the spin-orbit coupled material or disorder at the interface to the bulk superconductor, both of which tend to suppress superconductivity unless spin-orbit coupling is large.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2011

Z2 spin liquid in S=1/2 Heisenberg model on Kagome lattice: A projective symmetry group study of Schwinger-fermion mean-field states

With strong geometric frustration and quantum fluctuations, S=1/2 quantum Heisenberg antiferromagnets on the Kagome lattice has long been considered as an ideal platform to realize spin liquid (SL), a novel phase with no symmetry breaking and fractionalized excitations. A recent numerical study of Heisenberg S=1/2 Kagome lattice model (HKLM) show that in contrast to earlier studies, the ground state is a singlet-gapped SL with signatures of Z2 topological order. Motivated by this numerical discovery, we use projective symmetry group to classify all 20 possible Schwinger-fermion mean-field states of Z2 SLs on Kagome lattice. Among them we found only one gapped Z2 SL (which we call Z2[0,π]βstate) in the neighborhood of U(1)-Dirac SL state, whose energy is found to be the lowest among many other candidate SLs including the uniform resonating-valentce-bond states. We thus propose this Z2[0,π]βstate to be the numerically discovered SL ground state of HKLM.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2011

Static Electric Field in a 1D Systems without Boundaries

In this brief report, we show that in a 1D system with unit-cell doubling, the coefficient of the $θ$-term is not only determined the topological index, $\int i\bra{u_k}\frac{\d}{\d k}\ket{u_k}{\rm d}k$. Specifically, the relative position between the electronic orbitals and the ions also alters the coefficient. This resolves a paradox when we apply our previous result to the Su-Shreiffer-Heeger model where the two ground states related by a lattice translation have $θ$ differed by $π$. We also show that the static dielectric screening is the same with or without boundaries, on the contrary to what we have commented in our previous paper.

cond-mat.other↗

arXiv2011

Engineering a p+ip Superconductor: Comparison of Topological Insulator and Rashba Spin-Orbit Coupled Materials

We compare topological insulator materials and Rashba coupled surfaces as candidates for engineering p+ip superconductivity. Specifically, in each type of material we examine 1) the limitations to inducing superconductivity by proximity to an ordinary s-wave superconductor, and 2) the robustness of the resulting superconductivity against disorder. We find that topological insulators have strong advantages in both regards: there are no fundamental barriers to inducing superconductivity, and the induced superconductivity is immune to disorder. In contrast, for Rashba coupled quantum wires or surface states, the the achievable gap from induced superconductivity is limited unless the Rashba coupling is large. Furthermore, for small Rashba coupling the induced superconductivity is strongly susceptible to disorder. These features pose serious difficulties for realizing p+ip superconductors in semiconductor materials due to their weak spin-orbit coupling, and suggest the need to seek alternatives. Some candidate materials are discussed.

cond-mat.supr-con↗

arXiv2011

Magnetism and Mott Transition: A Slave-rotor Study

Motivated by the debate of spin-density-wave (SDW) versus local-moment (LM) picture in the iron-based superconducting (FeSC) materials, we consider a two-band orbital-symmetric Hubbard model in which there is robust Fermi surface nesting at $(π,0)$. We obtain the phase diagram of such system by a mean-field slave-rotor approach, in which the Fermi surface nesting and the SDW order are explicitly taken into account via a natural separation of scale between the Hund's coupling and the Coulomb interaction. We find that for a sizable range of Hund's coupling the Mott transition acquires a strong first-order character, but there also exists a small range of stronger Hund's coupling in which an enhancement of magnetization can be observed on the SDW side. We interpret the former scenario as one in which a sharp distinction can be drawn between LM and the SDW picture, and the latter scenario as one in which signs of LM physics begin to develop in the metallic phase. It is tempting to suggest that some FeSC materials are in the vicinity of the latter scenario.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2011

Robustness of Majorana Fermion induced Fractional Josephson Effect

It is shown in previous works that the coupling between two Majorana end states in superconducting quantum wires leads to fractional Josephson effect. However, in realistic experimental conditions, multiple bands of the wires are occupied and the Majorana end states are accompanied by other fermionic end states. This raises the question concerning the robustness of fractional Josephson effect in these situations. In this work, we show that the absence of the avoided energy crossing which gives rise to the fractional Josephson effect is robust, even when the Majorana fermions are coupled with arbitrary strengths to other fermions. Moreover, we calculate the temperature dependence of the fractional Josephson current and show that it is suppressed by thermal excitations to the other fermion bound states.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2010

Weak Mott insulators on the triangular lattice: possibility of a gapless nematic quantum spin liquid

We study the energetics of Gutzwiller projected BCS states of various symmetries for the triangular lattice antiferromagnet with a four particle ring exchange using variational Monte Carlo methods. In a range of parameters the energetically favored state is found to be a projected $d_{x^2-y^2}$ paired state which breaks lattice rotational symmetry. We show that the properties of this nematic or orientationally ordered paired spin liquid state as a function of temperature and pressure can account for many of the experiments on organic materials. We also study the ring-exchange model with ferromagnetic Heisenberg exchange and find that amongst the studied ansätze, a projected $f-$wave state is the most favorable.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2010

Topological Insulator and the $θ$-vacuum in a system without boundaries

In this paper we address two questions concerning the effective action of a topological insulator in one and three dimensional space without boundaries, such as a torus. The first is whether a uniform $θ$-term with $θ=π$ is generated for a strong topological insulator. The second is whether such a term has observable consequences in the bulk. The answers to both questions are positive, but the observability in three dimension vanishes for infinite system size.

cond-mat.other↗

arXiv2010

Majorana End-States in Multi-band Microstructures with Rashba Spin-Orbit Coupling

A recent work [1] demonstrated, for an ideal spinless p+ip superconductor, that Majorana end-states can be realized outside the strict one-dimensional limit, so long as: 1) the sample width does not greatly exceed the superconducting coherence length and 2) an odd number of transverse sub-bands are occupied. Here we extend this analysis to the case of an effective p+ip superconductor engineered from Rashba spin-orbit coupled surface with induced magnetization and superconductivity, and find a number of new features. Specifically, we find that finite size quantization allows Majorana end-states even when the chemical potential is outside of the induced Zeeman gap where the bulk material would not be topological. This is relevant to proposals utilizing semiconducting quantum wires, however, we also find that the bulk energy gap is substantially reduced if the induced magnetization is too large. We next consider a slightly different geometry, and show that Majorana end-states can be created at the ends of ferromagnetic domains. Finally, we consider the case of meandering edges and find, surprisingly, that the existence of well-defined transverse sub-bands is not necessary for the formation of robust Majorana end-states.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2010

Multichannel Generalization of Kitaev's Majorana End States and a Practical Route to Realize Them in Thin Films

The ends of one-dimensional p+ip superconductors have long been predicted to possess localized Majorana fermion modes. We show that Majorana end states survive beyond the strict 1D single-channel limit so long as the sample width does not exceed the superconducting coherence length, and exist when an odd number of transverse quantization channels are occupied. Consequently we find that the system undergoes a sequence of topological phase transitions driven by changing the chemical potential. These observations make it feasible to implement quasi-1D p+ip superconductors in metallic thin-film microstructures, which offer 3-4 orders of magnitude larger energy scales than semiconductor-based schemes. Some promising candidate materials are described.

cond-mat.supr-con↗

arXiv2010

Isotope effect on the superfluid density in conventional and high-temperature superconductors

We investigate the isotope effect on the London penetration depth of a superconductor which measures $n_S/m^*$, the ratio of superfluid density to effective mass. We use a simplified model of electrons weakly coupled to a single phonon frequency $ω_E$, but assume that the energy gap $Δ$ does not have any isotope effect. Nevertheless we find an isotope effect for $n_S/m^*$ which is significant if $Δ$ is sufficiently large that it becomes comparable to $ω_E$, a regime of interest to high $T_c$ cuprate superconductors and possibly other families of unconventional superconductors with relatively high $T_c$. Our model is too simple to describe the cuprates and it gives the wrong sign of the isotope effect when compared with experiment, but it is a proof of principle that the isotope effect exists for $n_S/m^*$ in materials where the pairing gap and $T_c$ is not of phonon origin and has no isotope effect.

cond-mat.supr-con↗

arXiv2010

Oxygen non-stoichiometry and the origin of Na ion ordering in P2-NaxCoO2

The impact of oxygen deficiency on physical properties of Na2/3CoO2-x has been investigated. From the combined thermogravimetric, magnetic susceptibility and synchrotron X-ray Laue diffraction studies, it is demonstrated that Na2/3CoO2 shows no superlattice ordering due to Na ions; however Na2/3CoO1.98, which has the same Co valence as that of Na0.71CoO2, shows nearly identical magnetic and transport properties and the same simple hexagonal superlattice ordering of sqrt(12)a. It is proposed that the Na ion ordering found in Na2/3CoO1.98 is identical to the ideal Na0.71CoO2 of large sqrt(12)a x sqrt(12)a x 3c superlattice but with additional Na vacancies which are bound to the oxygen defects at room temperature. We conclude that oxygen vacancies play a key role in stabilizing the superlattice structure and must be accounted for in its modeling.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2010

Oxygen non-stoichiometry and the origin of Na ion ordering in gamma-NaxCoO2

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2010

Raman signature of the U(1) Dirac spin-liquid state in spin-1/2 kagome system

We followed the Shastry--Shraiman formulation of Raman scattering in Hubbard systems and considered the Raman intensity profile in the spin-1/2 "perfect" kagome lattice herbertsmithite ZnCu_3(OH)_6Cl_2, assuming the ground state is well-described by the U(1) Dirac spin-liquid state. In the derivation of the Raman T-matrix, we found that the spin chirality term appears in the A_{2g} channel in the kagome lattice at the t^4/(ω_i-U)^3 order, but (contrary to the claims by Shastry and Shraiman) vanishes in the square lattice to that order. In the ensuing calculations on the spin-1/2 kagome lattice, we found that the Raman intensity profile in the E_g channel is invariant under an arbitrary rotation in the kagome plane, and that in all (A_{1g}, E_g, and A_{2g}) symmetry channels the Raman intensity profile contains broad continua that display power-law behaviors at low energy, with exponent approximately equal to 1 in the A_{2g} channel and exponent approximately equal to 3 in the E_g and the A_{1g} channels. For the A_{2g} channel, the Raman profile also contains a characteristic 1/ωsingularity, which arose in our model from an excitation of the emergent U(1) gauge field.

cond-mat.str-el↗