arXiv subjects

Yia-Chung Chang

Publications and source records attributed to Yia-Chung Chang.

At least 55 records · Page 3Linked to original sources

arXiv2016

A heat engine made of quantum dot molecules with high figure of merits

The transport of electrons through serially coupled quantum dot molecules (SCQDM) is investigated theoretically for application as an energy harvesting engine (EHE), which converts thermal heat to electrical power. We demonstrate that the charge current driven by a temperature bias shows bipolar oscillatory behavior with respect to gate voltage due to the unbalance between electrons and holes, which is different from the charge current driven by an applied bias. In addition, we reveal a Lenz's law between the charge current and the thermal induced voltage. The efficiency of EHE is higher for SCQDM in the orbital depletion situation rather than the orbital filling situation, owing to the many-body effect. The EHE efficiency is enhanced with increasing temperature bias, but suppressed as the electron hopping strength reduces. The fluctuation of QD energy levels at different sites also leads to a reduction of EHE efficiency. Finally, we demonstrate direction-dependent charge currents driven by the temperature bias for application as a novel charge diode.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2015

Theoretical Studies of Graphene Nanoribbon Quantum Dot Qubits

Graphene nanoribbon quantum dot qubits have been proposed as promising candidates for quantum computing applications to overcome the spin-decoherence problems associated with typical semiconductor (e.g. GaAs) quantum dot qubits. We perform theoretical studies of the electronic structures of graphene nanoribbon quantum dots by solving the Dirac equation with appropriate boundary conditions. We then evaluate the exchange splitting based on an unrestricted Hartree-Fock method for the Dirac particles. The electronic wave function and long-range exchange coupling due to the Klein tunneling and the Coulomb interaction are calculated for various gate configurations. It is found that the exchange coupling between qubits can be significantly enhanced by the Klein tunneling effect. The implications of our results for practical qubit construction and operation are discussed.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2015

Coboson many-body formalism for cold atom dimers with attraction between different fermion species only

Unlike the Coulomb potential that acts between all semiconductor carriers, the potential commonly used for BCS superconductors and cold atom gases acts between different fermion species only, these species differing by their spin or hyperfine index. The coboson formalism we here develop evidences that such composite bosons interact through fermion exchange only, thus rendering the structure of the Shiva diagrams that visualize their many-body effects far simpler. A separable potential is used to obtain analytical results for the $N$-coboson normalization factor and the $N$-coboson ground-state energy within the Born approximation, in terms of the Born dimer-dimer scattering length. This formalism opens the route toward approaching complex many-body effects, such as Bose-Einstein condensation, through a new perspective.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2015

A Mixed Basis Density Functional Approach for One-Dimensional Systems with B-splines

A mixed basis approach based on density functional theory is extended to one-dimensional(1D) systems. The basis functions here are taken to be the localized B-splines for the two finite non-periodic dimensions and the plane waves for the third periodic direction. This approach will significantly reduce the number of the basis and therefore is computationally efficient for the diagonalization of the Kohn-Sham Hamiltonian. For 1D systems, B-spline polynomials are particularly useful and efficient in two-dimensional spatial integrations involved in the calculations because of their absolute localization. Moreover, B-splines are not associated with atomic positions when the geometry structure is optimized, making the geometry optimization easy to implement. With such a basis set we can directly calculate the total energy of the isolated system instead of using the conventional supercell model with artificial vacuum regions among the replicas along the two non-periodic directions. The spurious Coulomb interaction between the charged defect and its repeated images by the supercell approach for charged systems can also be avoided. A rigorous formalism for the long-range Coulomb potential of both neutral and charged 1D systems under the mixed basis scheme will be derived. To test the present method, we apply it to study the infinite carbon-dimmer chain, graphene nanoribbon, carbon nanotube and positively-charged carbon-dimmer chain. The resulting electronic structures are presented and discussed in details.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2015

Correlation Energy for Elementary Bosons: Physics of the Singularity

We propose a compact perturbative approach that reveals the physical origin of the singularity occurring in the density dependence of correlation energy: like fermions, elementary bosons have a singular correlation energy which comes from the accumulation, through Feynman "bubble" diagrams, of the same non-zero momentum transfer excitations from the free particle ground state, that is, the Fermi sea for fermions and the Bose-Einstein condensate for bosons. This understanding paves the way toward deriving the correlation energy of composite bosons like atomic dimers and semiconductor excitons, by suggesting Shiva diagrams that have similarity with Feynman "bubble" diagrams, the previous elementary boson approaches, which hide this physics, being difficult to do so.

cond-mat.quant-gas↗

arXiv2015

Thermoelectric effects of quantum dot arrays embedded in nanowires

The thermoelectric properties of quantum dot arrays (QDAs) embedded in nanowires connected to electrodes are studied theoretically in the Coulomb blockade regime. A Hurbbard-Anderson model is used to simulate the electronic contribution to thermoelectric proper- ties of a QDA junction system. The electrical conductance, Seebeck coefficient, and electron thermal conductance are calculated by both the Keldysh Green function method and the mean-field approach. The phonon thermal conductivities are calculated by using the equation of phonon radiative transfer method. In the Coulomb blockade regime the electron thermal conductance is much smaller than the phonon thermal conductance. Therefore, the optimal figure of merit (ZT) can be enhanced by increasing thermal power and decreasing phonon thermal conductance simultaneously. We found that it is possible to obtain ZT value of InGaAs/GaAs QDAs embedded in nanowires larger than one at room temperature.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2015

Coboson many-body approach to the $N$-exciton ground-state energy

We derive the ground-state energy of $N$ composite bosons made of fermion pairs using the recently developed composite boson many-body formalism. We concentrate on the $N$-pair energy linear in density. We show that the scattering relevant for scattering length contains not only direct and exchange interaction scatterings but also the dimensionless "Pauli scattering" for fermion exchange in the absence of fermion-fermion interaction. Numerical resolution of the resulting "ladder" integral equation for fermions interacting through long-range Coulomb forces --- which act as effective repulsion between excitons made of same-spin electrons and same-spin holes --- shows that the prefactor of the $N$-exciton energy linear in density is substantially decreased from its Born approximation value, $13π/3$, by a factor $\simeq0.38$ for equal electron and hole effective masses. Interestingly, this factor goes to zero when the hole mass goes to infinity, making the triplet-exciton gas unstable in this limit.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2014

Efficient simulation for light scattering from plasmonic core-shell nanospheres on a substrate for biosensing

We have developed an efficient numerical method to investigate light scattering from plasmonic nanospheres on a substrate covered by a shell, based on the half-space Greens function approach. We use this method to study optical scattering from DNA molecules attached to metallic nanoparticles on a substrate and compare with experiment. We obtain fairly good agreement between theoretical predictions and the measured ellipsometric spectra. The metallic nanoparticles were used to detect the binding with DNA molecules in a microfluidic setup via spectroscopic ellipsometry (SE), and a detectable change in ellipsometric spectra was found when DNA molecules are captured on Au nanoparticles surface. Our theoretical simulation indicates that the coverage of Au nanosphere by a submonolayer of DNA molecules, which is modeled by a thin layer of dielectric material, can indeed lead to a small but detectable change in ellipsometric spectra. Our studies demonstrated the ultra-sensitive capability of SE for sensing submonolayer coverage of DNA molecules on Au nanospheres.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2014

Multiscale Talbot effects in Fibonacci geometry

This article investigates the Talbot effects in Fibonacci geometry by introducing the cut-and-project construction, which allows for capturing the entire infinite Fibonacci structure into a single computational cell. Theoretical and numerical calculations demonstrate the Talbot foci of Fibonacci geometry at distances that are multiples $(τ+2)(F_μ+τF_{μ+1} )^{-1}p/(2q)$ or $(τ+2)(L_μ+τL_{μ+1} )^{-1}p/(2q)$ of the Talbot distance. Here, ($p$, $q$) are coprime integers, $μ$ is an integer, $τ$ is the golden mean, and $F_μ$ and $L_μ$ are Fibonacci and Lucas numbers, respectively. The image of a single Talbot focus exhibits a multiscale pattern due to the self-similarity of the scaling Fourier spectrum.

physics.pop-ph↗

arXiv2014

A Mixed Basis Density Functional Approach for Low Dimensional Systems with B-splines

A mixed basis approach based on density functional theory is employed for low dimensional systems. The basis functions are taken to be plane waves for the periodic direction multiplied by B-spline polynomials in the non-periodic direction. B-splines have the following advantages:(1) the associated matrix elements are sparse, (2) B-splines possess a superior treatment of derivatives, (3) B-splines are not associated with atomic positions when the geometry structure is optimized, making the geometry optimization easy to implement. With this mixed basis set we can directly calculate the total energy of the system instead of using the conventional supercell model with a slab sandwiched between vacuum regions. A generalized Lanczos-Krylov iterative method is implemented for the diagonalization of the Hamiltonian matrix. To demonstrate the present approach, we apply it to study the C(001)-(2x1) surface with the norm-conserving pseudopotential, the n-type delta-doped graphene, and graphene nanoribbon with Vanderbilts ultra-soft pseudopotentials. All the resulting electronic structures were found to be in good agreement with those obtained by the VSAP code, but with a reduced number of basis.

physics.comp-ph↗

arXiv2013

Partition function of N composite bosons

The partition function of composite bosons ("cobosons" for short) is calculated in the canonical ensemble, with the Pauli exclusion principle between their fermionic components included in an exact way through the finite temperature many-body formalism for composite quantum particles we recently developed. To physically understand the very compact result we obtain, we first present a diagrammatic approach to the partition function of $N$ elementary bosons. We then show how to extend this approach to cobosons with Pauli blocking and interaction between their fermions. These diagrams provide deep insights on the structure of a coboson condensate, paving the way toward the determination of the critical parameters for their quantum condensation.

cond-mat.stat-mech↗

arXiv2013

Light scattering from coupled plasmonic nanospheres on a substrate

An efficient numerical method based on half-space Green function and spherical harmonics expansion is used to study the light scattering from coupled multiple nanospheres on a substrate. The ellipsometric spectra for various geometries of coupled Au nanospheres are calculated and analyzed to realize the effects of plasmonic coupling of closely-spaced nanospheres. With only a few parameters to describe the distribution of various coupled nanosphere clusters embedded in a random distribution of nanospheres, the calculated ellipsometric spectra can fit the experimental data very well. This illustrates that our realistic model calculations can be used for determination of the distribution of nanospheres on a substrate or embedded in multilayer structures such as biological samples.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2013

Effect of clustering on ellipsometric spectra of randomly distributed gold nanoparticles on a substrate

We present a theoretical model for describing light scattering from randomly distributed Au nanoparticles on a substrate, including the clustering effect. By using the finite-element Green function method and spherical harmonic basis functions, we are able to calculate the polarization-dependent reflectivity spectra of the system (modeled by randomly distributed nanoparticles coupled with clusters) efficiently and accurately. The calculated ellipsometric spectra of the system with clusters can adequately describe the experimental data for the whole frequency range. We find that the clustering effect leads to some prominent features in the low frequency range of the ellipsometric spectra, which are attributed to plasmonic resonances associated with the coupling of Au nanoparticles and clusters.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2013

Electronic structure and absorption spectrum of biexciton obtained by using exciton basis

We approach the biexciton Schrödinger equation not through the free-carrier basis as usually done, but through the free-exciton basis, exciton-exciton interactions being treated according to the recently developed composite boson many-body formalism which allows an exact handling of carrier exchange between excitons, as induced by the Pauli exclusion principle. We numerically solve the resulting biexciton Schrödinger equation with the exciton levels restricted to the ground state and we derive the biexciton ground state as well as the bound and unbound excited states as a function of hole-to-electron mass ratio. The biexciton ground-state energy we find, agrees reasonably well with variational results. Next, we use the obtained biexciton wave functions to calculate optical absorption in the presence of a dilute exciton gas in quantum well. We find a small asymmetric peak with a characteristic low-energy tail, identified with the biexciton ground state, and a set of large peaks associated with biexciton unbound states, i.e., exciton-exciton scattering states.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2013

Analytical approach for type-II semiconductor spherical core-shell quantum dots heterostructures with wide band gaps

A one-band model within the effective mass approximation is adopted to characterize the energy structure and oscillator strength of type-II semiconductor spherical core-shell quantum dots. The heteroepitaxial strain of the core-shell heterostructure is modeled by the elastic continuum approach. The model is applied to ZnTe/ZnSe core-shell, a wide band gap type-II heterostructure. The simulated absorption spectra are in fair agreement with available experimental results.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2013

Thermoelectric Properties of a Semiconductor Quantum Dot Chain Connected to Metallic Electrodes

The thermoelectric properties of a semiconduct quantum dot chain (SQDC) connected to metallic electrodes are theoretically investigated in the Coulomb blockade regime. An extended Hubbard model is employed to simulate the SQDC system consisted of {\color{blue}N=2,3,4, and 5} quantum dots (QDs). The charge and heat currents are calculated in the framework of Keldysh Green's function technique. We obtained a closed-form Landauer expression for the transmission coefficient of the SQDC system with arbitrary number of QDs by using the method beyond mean-field theory. The electrical conductance ($G_e$), Seebeck coefficient (S), thermal conductance, and figure of merit (ZT) are numerically calculated and analyzed in the linear response regime. When thermal conductance is dominated by phonon carriers, the optimization of ZT is determined by the power factor ($pF=S^2G_e$). We find that the optimization of ZT value favors the following conditions:(1) QDs with low energy level fluctuations, (2) QD energy levels lie above the Fermi level of electrodes, (3) $Γ< t_c \ll U_0$, where $t_c$, $U_0$, and $Γ$ are electron interdot hopping strength, on-site electron Coulomb interaction, and tunneling rate, respectively, and (4) $Γ_L=Γ_R$ with $Γ_L+Γ_R$ kept constant, where $Γ_L (Γ_R)$ is the left (right) tunneling rate. It is predicted that high ZT values can be achieved by tailoring above conditions.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2012

Bistability in the Tunnelling Current through a Ring of $N$ Coupled Quantum Dots

We study bistability in the electron transport through a ring of N coupled quantum dots with two orbitals in each dot. One orbital is localized (called b orbital) and coupling of the b orbitals in any two dots is negligible; the other is delocalized in the plane of the ring (called d orbital), due to coupling of the d orbitals in the neighboring dots, as described by a tight-binding model. The d orbitals thereby form a band with finite width. The b and d orbitals are connected to the source and drain electrodes with a voltage bias V, allowing the electron tunnelling. Tunnelling current is calculated by using a nonequilibrium Green function method recently developed to treat nanostructures with multiple energy levels. We find a bistable effect in the tunnelling current as a function of bias V, when the size N>50; this effect scales with the size N and becomes sizable at N~100. The temperature effect on bistability is also discussed. In comparison, mean-field treatment tends to overestimate the bistable effect.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2012

Trion ground state, excited states and absorption spectrum using electron-exciton basis

We solve the Schrödinger equation for two electrons plus one hole by writing it in the electron-exciton basis. The main advantage of this basis is to eliminate the exciton contribution from the trion energy in a natural way. The interacting electron-exciton system is treated using the recently developed composite boson many-body formalism which allows an exact handling of electron exchange. We numerically solve the resulting electron-exciton Schrödinger equation, with the exciton levels restricted to the lowest $1s, 2s$ and $3s$ states, and we derive the trion ground state energy as a function of the electron-to-hole mass ratio. While our results are in reasonable agreement with those obtained through the best variational methods using free carrier basis, this electron-exciton basis is mostly suitable to easily reach the bound and unbound trion excited states. Through their wave functions, we here calculate the optical absorption spectrum in the presence of hot carriers for 2D quantum wells. We find large peaks located at the exciton levels, which are attributed to electron-exciton (unbound) scattering states, and small peaks identified with trion bound states.

cond-mat.str-el↗