Publications

Order by: publication date number of citations

• Creating better superconductors by periodic nanopatterning

  Milan P. Allan, Mark H. Fischer, Oliver Ostojic, Arjo Andringa

  SciPost Phys. 3, 010 (2017) · published 10 August 2017 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  The quest to create superconductors with higher transition temperatures is as old as superconductivity itself. One strategy, popular after the realization that (conventional) superconductivity is mediated by phonons, is to chemically combine different elements within the crystalline unit cell to maximize the electron-phonon coupling. This led to the discovery of NbTi and Nb3Sn, to name just the most technologically relevant examples. Here, we propose a radically different approach to transform a `pristine' material into a better (meta-) superconductor by making use of modern fabrication techniques: designing and engineering the electronic properties of thin films via periodic patterning on the nanoscale. We present a model calculation to explore the key effects of different supercells that could be fabricated using nanofabrication or deliberate lattice mismatch, and demonstrate that specific pattern will enhance the coupling and the transition temperature. We also discuss how numerical methods could predict the correct design parameters to improve superconductivity in materials including Al, NbTi, and MgB2

  6 citations

• An effective field theory of magneto-elasticity

  Shashin Pavaskar, Riccardo Penco, Ira Z. Rothstein

  SciPost Phys. 12, 155 (2022) · published 11 May 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We utilize the coset construction to derive the effective field theory of magnon-phonon interactions in (anti)-ferromagnetic and ferrimagnetic insulating materials. The action is used to calculate the equations of motion which generalize the Landau-Lifshitz and stress equations to allow for magneto-acoustic couplings to all orders in the fields at lowest order in the derivative expansion. We also include the symmetry breaking effects due to Zeeman, and Dzyaloshinsky-Moriya interactions. This effective theory is a toolbox for the study of magneto-elastic phenomena from first principles. As an example we use this theory to calculate the leading order contribution to the magnon decay width due to its the decay into phonons.

  6 citations

• Effects of Hawking evaporation on PBH distributions

  Markus R. Mosbech, Zachary S. C. Picker

  SciPost Phys. 13, 100 (2022) · published 25 October 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Primordial black holes (PBHs) may lose mass by Hawking evaporation. For sufficiently small PBHs, they may lose a large portion of their formation mass by today, or evaporate completely if they form with mass $M<M_\mathrm{crit}\sim5\times10^{14}~\mathrm{g}$. We investigate the effect of this mass loss on extended PBH distributions, showing that the shape of the distribution is significantly changed between formation and today. We reconsider the $\gamma$-ray constraints on PBH dark matter in the Milky Way center with a correctly 'evolved' lognormal distribution, and derive a semi-analytic time-dependent distribution which can be used to accurately project monochromatic constraints to extended distribution constraints. We also derive the rate of black hole explosions in the Milky Way per year, finding that although there can be a significant number, it is extremely unlikely to find one close enough to Earth to observe. Along with a more careful argument for why monochromatic PBH distributions are unlikely to source an exploding PBH population today, we (unfortunately) conclude that we are unlikely to witness any PBH explosions.

  6 citations

• Many phases of generalized 3D instanton crystals

  Matti Jarvinen, Vadim Kaplunovsky, Jacob Sonnenschein

  SciPost Phys. 11, 018 (2021) · published 23 July 2021 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Nuclear matter at large number of colors is necessarily in a solid phase. In particular holographic nuclear matter takes the form of a crystal of instantons of the flavor group. In this article we initiate the analysis of the three-dimensional crystal structures and the orientation patterns for the two-body potential that follows from holographic duality. The outcome of the analysis includes several unexpected results. We perform simulations of ensembles of O(10000) instantons whereby we identify the lattice structure and orientations for the different values of the weight factors of the non-Abelian orientation terms in the two-body potential. The resulting phase diagram is surprisingly complex, including a variety of ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic crystals with various global orientation patterns, and various "non-Abelian" crystals where orientations have no preferred direction. The latter include variants of face-centered-cubic, hexagonal, and simple cubic crystals which may have remarkably large or small aspect ratios. The simulation results are augmented by analytic analysis of the long-distance divergences, and numerical computation of the (divergence free) energy differences between the non-Abelian crystals, which allows us to precisely determine the structure of the phase diagram.

  6 citations

• Quantum fidelity susceptibility in excited state quantum phase transitions: application to the bending spectra of nonrigid molecules

  Jamil Khalouf-Rivera, Miguel Carvajal, Francisco Pérez-Bernal

  SciPost Phys. 12, 002 (2022) · published 4 January 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We characterize excited state quantum phase transitions in the two dimensional limit of the vibron model with the quantum fidelity susceptibility, comparing the obtained results with the information provided by the participation ratio. As an application, we locate the eigenstate closest to the barrier to linearity and determine the linear or bent character of the different overtones for particular bending modes of six molecular species. We perform a fit and use the optimized eigenvalues and eigenstates in three cases and make use of recently published results for the other three cases.

  6 citations

• Traffic models and traffic-jam transition in quantum (N+1)-level systems

  Andrea Nava, Domenico Giuliano, Alessandro Papa, Marco Rossi

  SciPost Phys. Core 5, 022 (2022) · published 19 April 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We propose a model to implement and simulate different traffic-flow conditions in terms of quantum graphs hosting an (N+1)-level dot at each site, which allows us to keep track of the type and of the destination of each vehicle. By implementing proper Lindbladian local dissipators, we derive the master equations that describe the traffic flow in our system. To show the versatility and the reliability of our technique, we employ it to model different types of traffic flow (the symmetric three-way roundabout and the three-road intersection). Eventually, we successfully compare our predictions with results from classical models.

  6 citations

• The classical two-dimensional Heisenberg model revisited: An $SU(2)$-symmetric tensor network study

  Philipp Schmoll, Augustine Kshetrimayum, Jens Eisert, Román Orús, Matteo Rizzi

  SciPost Phys. 11, 098 (2021) · published 29 November 2021 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  The classical Heisenberg model in two spatial dimensions constitutes one of the most paradigmatic spin models, taking an important role in statistical and condensed matter physics to understand magnetism. Still, despite its paradigmatic character and the widely accepted ban of a (continuous) spontaneous symmetry breaking, controversies remain whether the model exhibits a phase transition at finite temperature. Importantly, the model can be interpreted as a lattice discretization of the $O(3)$ non-linear sigma model in $1+1$ dimensions, one of the simplest quantum field theories encompassing crucial features of celebrated higher-dimensional ones (like quantum chromodynamics in $3+1$ dimensions), namely the phenomenon of asymptotic freedom. This should also exclude finite-temperature transitions, but lattice effects might play a significant role in correcting the mainstream picture. In this work, we make use of state-of-the-art tensor network approaches, representing the classical partition function in the thermodynamic limit over a large range of temperatures, to comprehensively explore the correlation structure for Gibbs states. By implementing an $SU(2)$ symmetry in our two-dimensional tensor network contraction scheme, we are able to handle very large effective bond dimensions of the environment up to $\chi_E^\text{eff} \sim 1500$, a feature that is crucial in detecting phase transitions. With decreasing temperatures, we find a rapidly diverging correlation length, whose behaviour is apparently compatible with the two main contradictory hypotheses known in the literature, namely a finite-$T$ transition and asymptotic freedom, though with a slight preference for the second.

  6 citations

• Ballistic macroscopic fluctuation theory

  Benjamin Doyon, Gabriele Perfetto, Tomohiro Sasamoto, Takato Yoshimura

  SciPost Phys. 15, 136 (2023) · published 4 October 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We introduce a new universal framework describing fluctuations and correlations in quantum and classical many-body systems, at the Euler hydrodynamic scale of space and time. The framework adapts the ideas of the conventional macroscopic fluctuation theory (MFT) to systems that support ballistic transport. The resulting "ballistic MFT" (BMFT) is solely based on the Euler hydrodynamics data of the many-body system. Within this framework, mesoscopic observables are classical random variables depending only on the fluctuating conserved densities, and Euler-scale fluctuations are obtained by deterministically transporting thermodynamic fluctuations via the Euler hydrodynamics. Using the BMFT, we show that long-range correlations in space generically develop over time from long-wavelength inhomogeneous initial states in interacting models. This result, which we verify by numerical calculations, challenges the long-held paradigm that at the Euler scale, fluid cells may be considered uncorrelated. We also show that the Gallavotti-Cohen fluctuation theorem for non-equilibrium ballistic transport follows purely from time-reversal invariance of the Euler hydrodynamics. We check the validity of the BMFT by applying it to integrable systems, and in particular the hard-rod gas, with extensive simulations that confirm our analytical results.

  6 citations

• Putting a spin on metamaterials: Mechanical incompatibility as magnetic frustration

  Ben Pisanty, Erdal C. Oguz, Cristiano Nisoli, Yair Shokef

  SciPost Phys. 10, 136 (2021) · published 8 June 2021 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Mechanical metamaterials present a promising platform for seemingly impossible mechanics. They often require incompatibility of their elementary building blocks, yet a comprehensive understanding of its role remains elusive. Relying on an analogy to ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic binary spin interactions, we present a universal approach to identify and analyze topological mechanical defects for arbitrary building blocks. We underline differences between two- and three-dimensional metamaterials, and show how topological defects can steer stresses and strains in a controlled and non-trivial manner and can inspire the design of materials with hitherto unknown complex mechanical response.

  6 citations

• Generalised Onsager Algebra in Quantum Lattice Models

  Yuan Miao

  SciPost Phys. 13, 070 (2022) · published 28 September 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  The Onsager algebra is one of the cornerstones of exactly solvable models in statistical mechanics. Starting from the generalised Clifford algebra, we demonstrate its relations to the graph Temperley-Lieb algebra, and a generalisation of the Onsager algebra. We present a series of quantum lattice models as representations of the generalised Clifford algebra, possessing the structure of a special type of the generalised Onsager algebra. The integrability of those models is presented, analogous to the free fermionic eight-vertex model. We also mention further extensions of the models and physical properties related to the generalised Onsager algebras, hinting at a general framework that includes families of quantum lattice models possessing the structure of the generalised Onsager algebras.

  6 citations