arXiv subjects

Yi-Ting Hsu

Publications and source records attributed to Yi-Ting Hsu.

28 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv2020

Inversion-protected higher order topological superconductivity in monolayer WTe$_2$

Monolayer WTe$_2$, a centrosymmetric transition metal dichacogenide, has recently been established as a quantum spin Hall insulator and found superconducting upon gating. Here we study the pairing symmetry and topological nature of superconducting WTe$_2$ with a microscopic model at mean-field level. Surprisingly, we find that the spin-triplet phases in our phase diagram all host Majorana modes localized on two opposite corners. Even when the conventional pairing is favored, we find that an intermediate in-plane magnetic field exceeding the Pauli limit stabilizes an unconventional equal-spin pairing aligning with the field, which also hosts Majorana corner modes. Motivated by our findings, we obtain a recipe for two-dimensional superconductors featuring "higher-order topology" from the boundary perspective: Generally a superconducting inversion-symmetric quantum spin Hall material whose normal-state Fermi surface is away from high-symmetry points, such as gated monolayer WTe$_2$, hosts Majorana corner modes if the superconductivity is parity-odd. We further point out that this higher-order phase is an inversion-protected topological crystalline superconductor and study the bulk-boundary correspondence. Finally, we discuss possible experiments for probing the Majorana corner modes. Our findings suggest superconducting monolayer WTe$_2$ is a playground for higher-order topological superconductivity, and possibly the first material realization for inversion-protected Majorana corner modes without utilizing proximity effect.

cond-mat.supr-con↗

arXiv2020

Topological superconductivity, ferromagnetism, and valley-polarized phases in moire systems: Renormalization group analysis for twisted double bilayer graphene

Recent experiments have observed possible spin- and valley-polarized insulators and spin-triplet superconductivity in twisted double bilayer graphene, a moire structure consisting of a pair of Bernal-stacked bilayer graphene. Besides the continuously tunable band widths controlled by an applied displacement field and twist angle, these moire bands also possess van Hove singularities near the Fermi surface and a field-dependent nesting which is far from perfect. Here we carry out a perturbative renormalization group analysis to unbiasedly study the competition among all possible instabilities in twisted double bilayer graphene and related systems with a similar van Hove fermiology in the presence of weak but finite repulsive interactions. Our key finding is that there are several competing magnetic, valley, charge, and superconducting instabilities arising from interactions in twisted double bilayer graphene, which can be tuned by controlling the displacement field and the twist angle. In particular, we show that spin- or valley-polarized uniform instabilities generically dominate under moderate interactions smaller than the band width, whereas $p$-wave spin-triplet topological superconductivity and exotic spin-singlet modulated paired state become important as the interactions decrease. Realization of our findings in general moire systems with a similar van Hove fermiology should open up new opportunities for manipulating topological superconductivity and spin- or valley-polarized states in highly tunable platforms.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2019

Butterfly effect in interacting Aubry-Andre model: thermalization, slow scrambling, and many-body localization

The many-body localization transition in quasiperiodic systems has been extensively studied in recent ultracold atom experiments. At intermediate quasiperiodic potential strength, a surprising Griffiths-like regime with slow dynamics appears in the absence of random disorder and mobility edges. In this work, we study the interacting Aubry-Andre model, a prototype quasiperiodic system, as a function of incommensurate potential strength using a novel dynamical measure, information scrambling, in a large system of 200 lattice sites. Between the thermal phase and the many-body localized phase, we find an intermediate dynamical phase where the butterfly velocity is zero and information spreads in space as a power-law in time. This is in contrast to the ballistic spreading in the thermal phase and logarithmic spreading in the localized phase. We further investigate the entanglement structure of the many-body eigenstates in the intermediate phase and find strong fluctuations in eigenstate entanglement entropy within a given energy window, which is inconsistent with the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis. Machine-learning on the entanglement spectrum also reaches the same conclusion. Our large-scale simulations suggest that the intermediate phase with vanishing butterfly velocity could be responsible for the slow dynamics seen in recent experiments.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2018

Machine Learning Many-Body Localization: Search for the Elusive Nonergodic Metal

The breaking of ergodicity in isolated quantum systems with a single-particle mobility edge is an intriguing subject that has not yet been fully understood. In particular, whether a nonergodic but metallic phase exists or not in the presence of a one-dimensional quasiperiodic potential is currently under active debate. In this Letter, we develop a neural-network-based approach to investigate the existence of this nonergodic metallic phase in a prototype model using many-body entanglement spectra as the sole diagnostic. We find that such a method identifies with high confidence the existence of a nonergodic metallic phase in the midspectrum at an intermediate quasiperiodic potential strength. Our neural-network based approach shows how supervised machine learning can be applied not only in locating phase boundaries but also in providing a way to definitively examine the existence or not of a novel phase.

cond-mat.dis-nn↗

arXiv2017

Hybridization-induced interface states in a topological insulator-magnetic metal heterostructure

Recent experiments demonstrating large spin-transfer torques in topological insulator (TI)-ferromagnetic metal (FM) bilayers have generated a great deal of excitement due to their potential applications in spintronics. The source of the observed spin-transfer torque, however, remains unclear. This is because the large charge transfer from the FM to TI layer would prevent the Dirac cone at the interface from being anywhere near the Fermi level to contribute to the observed spin-transfer torque. Moreover, there is yet little understanding of the impact on the Dirac cone at the interface from the metallic bands overlapping in energy and momentum, where strong hybridization could take place. Here, we build a simple microscopic model and perform first-principles-based simulations for such a TI-FM heterostructure, considering the strong hybridization and charge transfer effects. We find that the original Dirac cone is destroyed by the hybridization as expected. Instead, we find a new interface state which we dub 'descendent state' to form near the Fermi level due to the strong hybridization with the FM states at the same momentum. Such a `descendent state' carries a sizable weight of the original Dirac interface state, and thus inherits the localization at the interface and the same Rashba-type spin-momentum locking. We propose that the `descendent state' may be an important source of the experimentally observed large spin-transfer torque in the TI-FM heterostructure.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2017

Topological superconductivity in monolayer transition metal dichalcogenides

Theoretically it has been known that breaking spin-degeneracy and effectively realizing 'spinless fermions' is a promising path to topological superconductors. Yet, topological superconductors are rare to date. Here, we propose to realize spinless fermions by splitting the spin-degeneracy in momentum space. Specifically, we identify monolayer hole-doped transition metal dichalcogenide (TMD)s as candidates for topological superconductors out of such momentum-space-split spinless fermions. Although electron-doped TMDs have recently been found superconducting, the observed superconductivity is unlikely topological due to the near spin-degeneracy. Meanwhile, hole-doped TMDs with momentum-space-split spinless fermions remain unexplored. Employing a renormalization group analysis, we propose that the unusual spin-valley locking in hole-doped TMDs together with repulsive interactions selectively favors two topological superconducting states: inter-pocket paired state with Chern number 2 and intra-pocket paired state with finite pair-momentum. A confirmation of our predictions will open up possibilities for manipulating topological superconductors on the device friendly platform of monolayer TMDs.

cond-mat.supr-con↗

arXiv2017

Band-structure-dependence of renormalization-group prediction on pairing channels

Recent experimental advances in using strain engineering to significantly alter the band structure of moderately correlated systems offer opportunities and challenges to weak-coupling renormalization group (RG) analysis approaches for predicting superconducting instabilities. On one hand, the RG approach can provide theoretical guidance. On the other hand, it is now imperative to better understand how the predictions of the RG approach depends on microscopic and non-universal model details. Here we focus on the effect of band-selective mass-renormalization often observed in angle resolved photoemission spectroscopy. Focusing on a specific example of uniaxially strained $\rm{Sr_2RuO_4}$ we carry out the weak-coupling RG analysis from two sets of band structures as starting points: one is based on density functional theory (DFT) calculations and the other is based on angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) measurements. Despite good agreement between the Fermi surfaces of the the two band structures we find the two sets of band structures to predict qualitatively different trends in the strain dependence of the superconducting transition temperature $T_c$ as well as the dominant channel.

cond-mat.supr-con↗

arXiv2016

Manipulating superconductivity in ruthenates through Fermi surface engineering

The key challenge in superconductivity research is to go beyond the historical mode of discovery-driven research. We put forth a new strategy, which is to combine theoretical developments in the weak-coupling renormalization group approach with the experimental developments in lattice strain driven Fermi surface-engineering. For concreteness we theoretically investigate how superconducting tendencies will be affected by strain engineering of ruthenates' Fermi surface. We first demonstrate that our approach qualitatively reproduces recent experiments under uniaxial strain. We then note that order few $\%$ strain readily accessible to epitaxial thin films, can bring the Fermi surface close to van Hove singularity. Using the experimental observation of the change in the Fermi surface under biaxial epitaxial strain and ab-initio calculations, we predict ${\rm T}_{\rm c}$ for triplet pairing to be maximized by getting close to the van Hove singularities without tuning on to the singularity.

cond-mat.supr-con↗

arXiv2014

Effects of surface-bulk hybridization in 3D topological `metals'

Identifying the effects of surface-bulk coupling is a key challenge towards exploiting the topological nature of the surface states in many available three-dimensional topological `metals'. Here we combine an effective-model calculation and an ab-initio slab calculation to study the effects of the lowest order surface-bulk interaction: the hybridization. In the effective-model study, we discretize an established low-energy effective four-band model and introduce the hybridization between the surface bands and bulk bands in the spirit of the Fano model. We find that the hybridization enhances the energy gap between bulk and Dirac surface states and preserves the latter's spin texture qualitatively albeit with a reduced spin-polarization magnitude. Our ab-initio study finds the energy gap between the bulk and surface states to grow upon an increase in the slab thickness, very much in qualitative agreement with the effective model study. Comparing the results of our two approaches, we deduce that the experimentally observed low magnitude of spin polarization can be attributed to a hybridization-type surface-bulk interaction. We discuss evidences for such hybridization in existing ARPES data.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2010

Interaction induced ferro-electricity in the rotational states of polar molecules

We show that a ferro-electric quantum phase transition can be driven by the dipolar interaction of polar molecules in the presence a micro-wave field. The obtained ferro-electricity crucially depends on the harmonic confinement potential, and the resulting dipole moment persists even when the external field is turned off adiabatically. The transition is shown to be second order for fermions and for bosons of a smaller permanent dipole moment, but is first order for bosons of a larger moment. Our results suggest the possibility of manipulating the microscopic rotational state of polar molecules by tuning the trap's aspect ratio (and other mesoscopic parameters), even though the later's energy scale is smaller than the former's by six orders of magnitude.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗