Publications

Order by: publication date number of citations

• A supervised learning algorithm for interacting topological insulators based on local curvature

  Paolo Molignini, Antonio Zegarra, Evert van Nieuwenburg, R. Chitra, Wei Chen

  SciPost Phys. 11, 073 (2021) · published 28 September 2021 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Topological order in solid state systems is often calculated from the integration of an appropriate curvature function over the entire Brillouin zone. At topological phase transitions where the single particle spectral gap closes, the curvature function diverges and changes sign at certain high symmetry points in the Brillouin zone. These generic properties suggest the introduction of a supervised machine learning scheme that uses only the curvature function at the high symmetry points as input data. We apply this scheme to a variety of interacting topological insulators in different dimensions and symmetry classes. We demonstrate that an artificial neural network trained with the noninteracting data can accurately predict all topological phases in the interacting cases with very little numerical effort. Intriguingly, the method uncovers a ubiquitous interaction-induced topological quantum multicriticality in the examples studied.

  8 citations

• Non-perturbative intertwining between spin and charge correlations: A ``smoking gun'' single-boson-exchange result

  Severino Adler, Friedrich Krien, Patrick Chalupa-Gantner, Giorgio Sangiovanni, Alessandro Toschi

  SciPost Phys. 16, 054 (2024) · published 23 February 2024 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We study the microscopic mechanism controlling the interplay between local charge and local spin fluctuations in correlated electron systems via a thorough investigation of the generalized on-site charge susceptibility of several fundamental many-electron models, such as the Hubbard atom, the Anderson impurity model, and the Hubbard model. By decomposing the numerically determined generalized susceptibility in terms of physically transparent single-boson exchange processes, we unveil the microscopic mechanisms responsible for the breakdown of the self-consistent many-electron perturbation expansion. In particular, we unambiguously identify the origin of the significant suppression of its diagonal entries in (Matsubara) frequency space and the slight increase of the off-diagonal ones which cause the breakdown. The suppression effect on the diagonal elements originates directly from the electronic scattering on local magnetic moments, reflecting their increasingly longer lifetime as well as their enhanced effective coupling with the electrons. Instead, the slight and diffuse enhancement of the off-diagonal terms can be mostly ascribed to multiboson scattering processes. The strong intertwining between spin and charge sectors is partly weakened at the Kondo temperature due to a progressive reduction of the effective spin-fermion coupling of local magnetic fluctuations in the low frequency regime. Our analysis, thus, clarifies the precise mechanism through which the physical information is transferred between different scattering channels of interacting electron problems and highlights the pivotal role played by such an intertwining in the physics of correlated electrons beyond the perturbative regime.

  8 citations

• Non-coplanar magnetism, topological density wave order and emergent symmetry at half-integer filling of moiré Chern bands

  Patrick H. Wilhelm, Thomas C. Lang, Mathias S. Scheurer, Andreas M. Läuchli

  SciPost Phys. 14, 040 (2023) · published 20 March 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Twisted double- and mono-bilayer graphene are graphene-based moiré materials hosting strongly correlated fermions in a gate-tunable conduction band with a topologically non-trivial character. Using unbiased exact diagonalization complemented by unrestricted Hartree-Fock calculations, we find that the strong electron-electron interactions lead to a non-coplanar magnetic state, which has the same symmetries as the tetrahedral antiferromagnet on the triangular lattice and can be thought of as a skyrmion lattice commensurate with the moiré scale, competing with a set of ferromagnetic, topological charge density waves featuring an approximate emergent O(3) symmetry, "rotating" the different charge density wave states into each other. Direct comparison with exact diagonalization reveals that the ordered phases are accurately described within the unrestricted Hartree-Fock approximation. Exhibiting a finite charge gap and Chern number $|C|=1$, the formation of charge density wave order which is intimately connected to a skyrmion lattice phase is consistent with recent experiments on these systems.

  7 citations

• Statistical Floquet prethermalization of the Bose-Hubbard model

  Emanuele G. Dalla Torre, David Dentelski

  SciPost Phys. 11, 040 (2021) · published 24 August 2021 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  The manipulation of many-body systems often involves time-dependent forces that cause unwanted heating. One strategy to suppress heating is to use time-periodic (Floquet) forces at large driving frequencies. For quantum spin systems with bounded spectra, it was shown rigorously that the heating rate is exponentially small in the driving frequency. Recently, the exponential suppression of heating has also been observed in an experiment with ultracold atoms, realizing a periodically driven Bose-Hubbard model. This model has an unbounded spectrum and, hence, is beyond the reach of previous theoretical approaches. Here, we study this model with two semiclassical approaches valid, respectively, at large and weak interaction strengths. In both limits, we compute the heating rates by studying the statistical probability to encounter a many-body resonance, and obtain a quantitative agreement with the exact diagonalization of the quantum model. Our approach demonstrates the relevance of statistical arguments to Floquet perthermalization of interacting many-body quantum systems.

  7 citations

• Chiral $p$-wave superconductivity in twisted bilayer graphene from dynamical mean field theory

  B. Pahlevanzadeh, P. Sahebsara, David Sénéchal

  SciPost Phys. 11, 017 (2021) · published 21 July 2021 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We apply cluster dynamical mean field theory with an exact-diagonalization impurity solver to a Hubbard model for magic-angle twisted bilayer graphene, built on the tight-binding model proposed by Kang and Vafek (2018), which applies to the magic angle $1.30^\circ$. We find that triplet superconductivity with $p+ip$ symmetry is stabilized by CDMFT, as well as a subdominant singlet $d+id$ state. A minimum of the order parameter exists close to quarter-filling and three-quarter filling, as observed in experiments.

  7 citations

• Extracting electronic many-body correlations from local measurements with artificial neural networks

  Faluke Aikebaier, Teemu Ojanen, Jose L. Lado

  SciPost Phys. Core 6, 030 (2023) · published 17 April 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  The characterization of many-body correlations provides a powerful tool for analyzing correlated quantum materials. However, experimental extraction of quantum entanglement in correlated electronic systems remains an open problem in practice. In particular, the correlation entropy quantifies the strength of quantum correlations in interacting electronic systems, yet it requires measuring all the single-particle correlators of a macroscopic sample. To circumvent this bottleneck, we introduce a strategy to obtain the correlation entropy of electronic systems solely from a set of local measurements. We show that, by combining local particle-particle and density-density correlations with a neural-network algorithm, the correlation entropy can be predicted accurately. Specifically, we show that for a generalized interacting fermionic model, our algorithm yields an accurate prediction of the correlation entropy from a set of noisy local correlators. Our work shows that the correlation entropy in interacting electron systems can be reconstructed from local measurements, providing a starting point to experimentally extract many-body correlations with local probes.

  7 citations

• Electronic excitations of the charged nitrogen-vacancy center in diamond obtained using time-independent variational density functional calculations

  Aleksei V. Ivanov, Yorick L. A. Schmerwitz, Gianluca Levi, Hannes Jónsson

  SciPost Phys. 15, 009 (2023) · published 13 July 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Elucidation of the mechanism for optical spin initialization of point defects in solids in the context of quantum applications requires an accurate description of the excited electronic states involved. While variational density functional calculations have been successful in describing the ground state of a great variety of systems, doubts have been expressed in the literature regarding the ability of such calculations to describe electronic excitations of point defects. A direct orbital optimization method is used here to perform time-independent, variational density functional calculations of a prototypical defect, the negatively charged nitrogen-vacancy center in diamond. The calculations include up to 511 atoms subject to periodic boundary conditions and the excited state calculations require similar computational effort as ground state calculations. Contrary to some previous reports, the use of local and semilocal density functionals gives the correct ordering of the low-lying triplet and singlet states, namely ${}^{3}A_2 < {}^{1}E < {}^{1}A_1 < {}^{3}E$. Furthermore, the more advanced meta generalized gradient approximation functionals give results that are in remarkably good agreement with high-level, many-body calculations as well as available experimental estimates, even for the excited singlet state which is often referred to as having multireference character. The lowering of the energy in the triplet excited state as the atom coordinates are optimized in accordance with analytical forces is also close to the experimental estimate and the resulting zero-phonon line triplet excitation energy is underestimated by only 0.15 eV. The approach used here is found to be a promising tool for studying electronic excitations of point defects in, for example, systems relevant for quantum technologies.

  7 citations

• HarmonicBalance.jl: A Julia suite for nonlinear dynamics using harmonic balance

  Jan Košata, Javier del Pino, Toni L. Heugel, Oded Zilberberg

  SciPost Phys. Codebases 6 (2022) · published 24 August 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  HarmonicBalance.jl is a publicly available Julia package designed to simplify and solve systems of periodic time-dependent nonlinear ordinary differential equations. Time dependence of the system parameters is treated with the harmonic balance method, which approximates the system's behaviour as a set of harmonic terms with slowly-varying amplitudes. Under this approximation, the set of all possible steady-state responses follows from the solution of a polynomial system. In HarmonicBalance.jl, we combine harmonic balance with contemporary implementations of symbolic algebra and the homotopy continuation method to numerically determine all steady-state solutions and their associated fluctuation dynamics. For the exploration of involved steady-state topologies, we provide a simple graphical user interface, allowing for arbitrary solution observables and phase diagrams. HarmonicBalance.jl is a free software available at https://github.com/NonlinearOscillations/HarmonicBalance.jl.

  7 citations

• Automatic contraction of unstructured tensor networks

  Adam S. Jermyn

  SciPost Phys. 8, 005 (2020) · published 15 January 2020 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  The evaluation of partition functions is a central problem in statistical physics. For lattice systems and other discrete models the partition function may be expressed as the contraction of a tensor network. Unfortunately computing such contractions is difficult, and many methods to make this tractable require periodic or otherwise structured networks. Here I present a new algorithm for contracting unstructured tensor networks. This method makes no assumptions about the structure of the network and performs well in both structured and unstructured cases so long as the correlation structure is local.

  7 citations

• Majorana bound states in encapsulated bilayer graphene

  Fernando Peñaranda, Ramón Aguado, Elsa Prada, Pablo San-Jose

  SciPost Phys. 14, 075 (2023) · published 18 April 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  The search for robust topological superconductivity and Majorana bound states continues, exploring both one-dimensional (1D) systems such as semiconducting nanowires and two-dimensional (2D) platforms. In this work we study a 2D approach based on graphene bilayers encapsulated in transition metal dichalcogenides that, unlike previous proposals involving the Quantum Hall regime in graphene, requires weaker magnetic fields and does not rely on interactions. The encapsulation induces strong spin-orbit coupling on the graphene bilayer, which opens a sizeable gap and stabilizes fragile pairs of helical edge states. We show that, when subject to an in-plane Zeeman field, armchair edges can be transformed into p-wave one-dimensional topological superconductors by contacting them laterally with conventional superconductors. We demonstrate the emergence of Majorana bound states (MBSs) at the sample corners of crystallographically perfect flakes, belonging either to the D or the BDI symmetry classes depending on parameters. We compute the phase diagram, the resilience of MBSs against imperfections, and their manifestation as a 4$\pi$-periodic effect in Josephson junction geometries, all suggesting the existence of a topological phase within experimental reach.

  7 citations