arXiv subjects

Qi Zhou

Publications and source records attributed to Qi Zhou.

At least 235 records · Page 13Linked to original sources

arXiv2016

Nodal Brillouin Zone Boundary from Folding a Chern Insulator

Chern insulator is a building block of many topological quantum matters, ranging from quantum spin Hall insulators to fractional Chern insulators. Here, we discuss a new type of insulator, which consists of two half filled ordinary Chern insulators. On the one hand, the bulk energy spectrum is obtained from folding that of either Chern insulator. Such folding gives rise to a nodal boundary of the Brillouin zone, at which the band crossing is protected by the symmetries of the two-dimensional lattice that is invariant under combined transformations in the spatial and the spin space. It also provides one a natural platform to explore the non-abelian Berry curvature and the resultant quantum phenomena. On the other hand, these two underlying Chern insulators are distinguished from each other by nonsymmorphic operators, which lead to intriguing properties absent in conventional Chern insulators. A new degree of freedom, the parity of the nonsymmorphic symmetry, needs to be introduced for describing the topological pumping, if the edge respects the nonsymmorphic symmetry.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2016

Contact matrix in dilute quantum systems

Contact has been well established as an important quantity to govern dilute quantum systems, in which the pairwise correlation at short distance traces a broad range of thermodynamic properties. So far, studies have been focusing on contact in individual angular momentum channels. Here, we point out that, to have a complete description of the pairwise correlation in a general dilute quantum systems, contact should be defined as a matrix. Whereas the diagonal terms of such matrix include contact of all partial wave scatterings, the off-diagonal terms, which elude previous studies in the literature, characterise the coherence of the asymptotic pairwise wavefunction in the angular momentum space and determine important thermodynamic quantities including the momentum distribution. Contact matrix allows physicists to access unexplored connections between short-range correlations and macroscopic quantum phenomena. As an example, we show the direct connection between contact matrix and order parameters of a superfluid with mixed partial waves.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2016

A two-leg Su-Schrieffer-Heeger chain with glide reflection symmetry

The Su-Schrieffer-Heeger (SSH) model lays the foundation of many important concepts in quantum topological matters. Since it tells one that topological states may be distinguished by abelian geometric phases, a question naturally arises as to what happens if one assembles two topologically distinct states. Here, we show that a spin-dependent double-well optical lattice allows one to couple two topologically distinct SSH chains in the bulk and realise a glided-two-leg SSH model that respects the glide reflection symmetry. Such model gives rise to intriguing quantum phenomena beyond the paradigm of a traditional SSH model. It is characterised by Wilson line that requires non-abelian Berry connections, and the interplay between the glide symmetry and interaction automatically leads to charge fractionalisation without jointing two lattice potentials at an interface. Our work demonstrates the power of ultracold atoms to create new theoretical models for studying topological matters.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2015

Sharp Phase transitions for the almost Mathieu operator

It is known that the spectral type of the almost Mathieu operator depends in a fundamental way on both the strength of the coupling constant and the arithmetic properties of the frequency. We study the competition between those factors and locate the point where the phase transition from singular continuous spectrum to pure point spectrum takes place, which solves Jitomirskaya's conjecture in \cite{Ji95,J07}. Together with \cite{Aab}, we give the sharp description of phase transitions for the almost Mathieu operator.

math.SP↗

arXiv2015

The Silicon and Calcium High-Velocity Features in Type Ia Supernovae from Early to Maximum Phases

The high-velocity features (HVFs) in optical spectra of type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) are examined with a large sample including very early-time spectra (e.g., t < -7 days). Multiple Gaussian fits are applied to examine the HVFs and their evolutions, using constraints on expansion velocities for the same species (i.e., SiII 5972 and SiII 6355). We find that strong HVFs tend to appear in SNe Ia with smaller decline rates (e.g., dm15(B)<1.4 mag), clarifying that the finding by Childress et al. (2014) for the Ca-HVFs in near-maximum-light spectra applies both to the Si-HVFs and Ca-HVFs in the earlier phase. The Si-HVFs seem to be more common in fast-expanding SNe Ia, which is different from the earlier result that the Ca-HVFs are associated with SNe Ia having slower SiII 6355 velocities at maximum light (i.e., Vsi). This difference can be due to that the HVFs in fast-expanding SNe Ia usually disappear more rapidly and are easily blended with the photospheric components when approaching the maximum light. Moreover, SNe Ia with both stronger HVFs at early phases and larger Vsi are found to have noticeably redder B-V colors and occur preferentially in the inner regions of their host galaxies, while those with stronger HVFs but smaller Vsi show opposite tendencies, suggesting that these two subclasses have different explosion environments and their HVFs may have different origins. We further examine the relationships between the absorption features of SiII 6355 and CaII IR lines, and find that their photospheric components are well correlated in velocity and strength but the corresponding HVFs show larger scatter. These results cannot be explained with ionization and/or thermal processes alone, and different mechanisms are required for the creation of HVF-forming region in SNe Ia.

astro-ph.HE↗

arXiv2015

Experimental realization of a two-dimensional synthetic spin-orbit coupling in ultracold Fermi gases

Spin-orbit coupling (SOC) is central to many physical phenomena, including fine structures of atomic spectra and quantum topological matters. Whereas SOC is in general fixed in a physical system, atom-laser interaction provides physicists a unique means to create and control synthetic SOC for ultracold atoms \cite{Dalibard}. Though significant experimental progresses have been made, a bottleneck in current studies is the lack of a two-dimensional (2D) synthetic SOC, which is crucial for realizing high-dimensional topological matters. Here, we report the experimental realization of 2D SOC in ultracold $^{40}$K Fermi gases using three lasers, each of which dresses one atomic hyperfine spin state. Through spin injection radio-frequency (rf) spectroscopy, we probe the spin-resolved energy dispersions of dressed atoms, and observe a highly controllable Dirac point created by the 2D SOC. Our work paves the way for exploring high-dimensional topological matters in ultracold atoms using Raman schemes.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2015

Concept of contact spectrum and its applications in atomic quantum Hall states

A unique feature of ultracold atoms is the separation of length scales, $r_0\ll k_F^{-1}$, where $k_F$ and $r_0$ are the Fermi momentum characterizing the average particle distance and the range of interaction between atoms respectively. For $s$-wave scattering, Shina Tan discovered that such diluteness leads to universal relations, all of which are governed by contact, among a wide range of thermodynamic quantities. Here, we show that the concept of contact can be generalized to an arbitrary partial-wave scattering. Contact of all partial-wave scatterings form a contact spectrum, which establishes universal thermodynamic relations with notable differences from those in the presence of $s$-wave scattering alone. Moreover, such a contact spectrum has an interesting connection with a special bipartite entanglement spectrum of atomic quantum Hall states, and enables an intrinsic probe of these highly correlated states using two-body short-ranged correlations.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2015

Chiral d-wave superfluid in periodically driven lattices

Chiral d-wave superfluid is a preliminary example of topological matters that intrinsically encodes interaction effects. It exhibits fascinating properties including a finite Chern number in the bulk and topologically protected edge states, which have been invoking physicists for decades. However, unlike s-wave superfluids prevalent in nature, its existence requires a strong interaction in the d-wave channel, a criterion that is difficult to access in ordinary systems. So far, such an unconventional superfluid has not been discovered in experiments. Here, we present a new principle for creating a two-dimensional chiral d-wave superfluid using periodically driven lattices. Due to an imprinted two-dimensional pseudospin-orbit coupling, where the sublattice index serves as the pseudospin, s-wave interaction between two hyperfine spin states naturally creates a chiral d-wave superfluid. This scheme also allows physicists to study the phase transition between the topologically distinct s- and d-wave superfluids by controlling the driving field or the particle density.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2014

Critical behaviours of contact near phase transitions

A central quantity of importance for ultracold atoms is contact, which measures two-body correlations at short distances in dilute systems. It appears in universal relations among thermodynamic quantities, such as large momentum tails, energy, and dynamic structure factors, through the renowned Tan relations. However, a conceptual question remains open as to whether or not contact can signify phase transitions that are insensitive to short-range physics. Here we show that, near a continuous classical or quantum phase transition, contact exhibits a variety of critical behaviors, including scaling laws and critical exponents that are uniquely determined by the universality class of the phase transition and a constant contact per particle. We also use a prototypical exactly solvable model to demonstrate these critical behaviors in one-dimensional strongly interacting fermions. Our work establishes an intrinsic connection between the universality of dilute many-body systems and universal critical phenomena near a phase transition.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2014

Shaping topological properties of the band structures in a shaken optical lattice

To realize band structures with non-trivial topological properties in an optical lattice is an exciting topic in current studies on ultra cold atoms. Here we point out that this lofty goal can be achieved by using a simple scheme of shaking an optical lattice, which is directly applicable in current experiments. The photon-assistant band hybridization leads to the production of an effective spin-orbit coupling, in which the band index represents the pseudospin. When this spin-orbit coupling has finite strengths along multiple directions, non-trivial topological structures emerge in the Brillouin zone, such as topological defects with a winding number 1 or 2 in a shaken square lattice. The shaken lattice also allows one to study the transition between two band structures with distinct topological properties.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2014

A Two-dimensional Algebraic Quantum Liquid Produced by an Atomic Simulator of the Quantum Lifshitz Model

Bosons have a natural instinct to condense at zero temperature. It is a long-standing challenge to create a high-dimensional quantum liquid that does not exhibit long-range order at the ground state, as either extreme experimental parameters or sophisticated designs of microscopic Hamiltonian are required for suppressing the condensation. Here, we show that ultra cold atoms with synthetic spin-orbit coupling provide physicists a simple and practical scheme to produce a two-dimensional algebraic quantum liquid at the ground state. This quantum liquid arises at a critical Lifshitz point, where the single-particle ground state shrinks to a point from a circle in the momentum space, and many fundamental properties of two-dimensional bosons are changed in its proximity. Such an ideal simulator of the quantum Lifshitz model allows experimentalists to directly visualize and explore the deconfinement transition of topological excitations, an intriguing phenomenon that is difficult to access in other systems.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2013

The epigenome of evolving Drosophila neo-sex chromosomes: dosage compensation and heterochromatin formation

Drosophila Y chromosomes are composed entirely of silent heterochromatin, while male X chromosomes have highly accessible chromatin and are hypertranscribed due to dosage compensation. Here, we dissect the molecular mechanisms and functional pressures driving heterochromatin formation and dosage compensation of the recently formed neo-sex chromosomes of Drosophila miranda. We show that the onset of heterochromatin formation on the neo-Y is triggered by an accumulation of repetitive DNA. The neo-X has evolved partial dosage compensation and we find that diverse mutational paths have been utilized to establish several dozen novel binding consensus motifs for the dosage compensation complex on the neo-X, including simple point mutations at pre-binding sites, insertion and deletion mutations, microsatellite expansions, or tandem amplification of weak binding sites. Spreading of these silencing or activating chromatin modifications to adjacent regions results in massive mis-expression of neo-sex linked genes, and little correspondence between functionality of genes and their silencing on the neo-Y or dosage compensation on the neo-X. Intriguingly, the genomic regions being targeted by the dosage compensation complex on the neo-X and those becoming heterochromatic on the neo-Y show little overlap, possibly reflecting different propensities along the ancestral chromosome to adopt active or repressive chromatin configurations. Our findings have broad implications for current models of sex chromosome evolution, and demonstrate how mechanistic constraints can limit evolutionary adaptations. Our study also highlights how evolution can follow predictable genetic trajectories, by repeatedly acquiring the same 21-bp consensus motif for recruitment of the dosage compensation complex, yet utilizing a diverse array of random mutational changes to attain the same phenotypic outcome.

q-bio.GN↗

arXiv2013

Enhancement of condensate depletion due to spin-orbit coupling

We show that spin-orbit coupling (SOC) significantly enhances the depletion of a homogeneous Bose-Einstein condensate in three dimensions. With decreasing anisotropy of the SOC, both the quantum and thermal depletion increase. In particular, different types of SOC give rise to qualitatively different dependences of the condensate depletion on microscopic variables including the scattering length, the strength of the SOC, and the temperature, which can be directly observed once these types of SOC are realized in experiments. Moreover, we point out that thermal depletion in three dimensions becomes logarithmically divergent at any given finite temperature when both the SOC and the interaction approach the isotropic limit.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2013

Fate of a Bose-Einstein Condensate in the Presence of Spin-Orbit Coupling

Intensive theoretical studies have recently predicted that a Bose-Einstein condensate will exhibit a variety of novel properties if spin-orbit coupling is present. However, an unambiguous fact has also been pointed out: Rashba coupling destroys a condensate of noninteracting bosons even in high dimensions. Therefore, a conceptually important question arises as to whether or not a condensate exists in the presence of interaction and a general type of spin-orbit coupling. Here we show that interaction qualitatively changes the ground state of bosons under Rashba spin-orbit coupling. Any infinitesimal repulsion forces bosons either to condense at one or two momentum states or to form a superfragmented state that is a superposition of infinite numbers of fragmented condensates. The superfragmented state is unstable against the anisotropy of spin-orbit coupling in systems with large numbers of particles, leading to the revival of a condensate in current experiments.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2013

An Improved LR-aided K-Best Algorithm for MIMO Detection

Recently, lattice reduction (LR) technique has caught great attention for multi-input multi-output (MIMO) receiver because of its low complexity and high performance. However, when the number of antennas is large, LR-aided linear detectors and successive interference cancellation (SIC) detectors still exhibit considerable performance gap to the optimal maximum likelihood detector (MLD). To enhance the performance of the LR-aided detectors, the LR-aided K-best algorithm was developed at the cost of the extra complexity on the order $\mathcal{O}(N_t^2 K + N_t K^2)$, where $N_t$ is the number of transmit antennas and $K$ is the number of candidates. In this paper, we develop an LR-aided K-best algorithm with lower complexity by exploiting a priority queue. With the aid of the priority queue, our analysis shows that the complexity of the LR-aided K-best algorithm can be further reduced to $\mathcal{O}(N_t^2 K + N_t K {\rm log}_2(K))$. The low complexity of the proposed LR-aided K-best algorithm allows us to perform the algorithm for large MIMO systems (e.g., 50x50 MIMO systems) with large candidate sizes. Simulations show that as the number of antennas increases, the error performance approaches that of AWGN channel.

cs.IT↗

arXiv2012

Embedding of Analytic Quasi-Periodic Cocycles into Analytic Quasi-Periodic Linear Systems and its Applications

In this paper, we prove that any analytic quasi-periodic cocycle close to constant is the Poincaré map of an analytic quasi-periodic linear system close to constant. With this local embedding theorem, we get fruitful new results. We show that the almost reducibility of an analytic quasi-periodic linear system is equivalent to the almost reducibility of its corresponding Poincaré cocycle. By the local embedding theorem and the equivalence, we transfer the recent local almost reducibility results of quasi-periodic linear systems \cite{HoY} to quasi-periodic cocycles, and the global reducibility results of quasi-periodic cocycles \cite{A,AFK} to quasi-periodic linear systems. Finally, we give a positive answer to a question of \cite{AFK} and use it to prove Anderson localization results for long-range quasi-periodic operator with Liouvillean frequency, which gives a new proof of \cite{AJ05,AJ08,BJ02}. The method developed in our paper can also be used to prove some nonlinear local embedding results.

math.DS↗

arXiv2011

Mott insulating phases and magnetism of fermions in a double-well optical lattice

We theoretically investigate, using non-perturbative strong correlation techniques, Mott insulating phases and magnetic ordering of two-component fermions in a two-dimensional double-well optical lattice. At filling of two fermions per site, there are two types of Mott insulators, one of which is characterized by spin-1 antiferromagnetism below the Neel temperature. The super-exchange interaction in this system is induced by the interplay between the inter-band interaction and the spin degree of freedom. A great advantage of the double-well optical lattice is that the magnetic quantum phase diagram and the Neel temperature can be easily controlled by tuning the orbital energy splitting of the two-level system. Particularly, the Neel temperature can be one order of magnitude larger than that in standard optical lattices, facilitating the experimental search for magnetic ordering in optical lattice systems.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2011

Interaction-induced excited-band condensate in a double-well optical lattice

We show theoretically that interaction effects in a double-well optical lattice can induce condensates in an excited band. For a symmetric double-well lattice, bosons condense into the bottom of the excited band at the edge of the Brillouin Zone if the chemical potential is above a critical value. For an asymmetric lattice, a condensate with zero momentum is automatically induced in the excited band by the condensate in the lowest band. This is due to a combined effect of interaction and lattice potential, which reduces the band gap and breaks the inversion symmetry. Our work can be generalized to a superlattice composed of multiple-well potentials at each lattice site, where condensates can be induced in even higher bands.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗