Publications

Order by: publication date number of citations

• $\Delta$S$^z$=2 quantum magnetization discontinuities proportional in number to the spin s in C$_{60}$: Origin and the role of symmetry

  Nikolaos P. Konstantinidis

  SciPost Phys. 15, 037 (2023) · published 31 July 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  The quantum antiferromagnetic Heisenberg model on the fullerene C$_{60}$ in a magnetic field has $4s$ ground-state magnetization discontinuities with $\Delta S^z=2$ as a function of the spin quantum number $s$ that disappear at the classical limit. The molecule can be seen as the fullerene C$_{20}$ with interpentagon interactions that generate the discontinuities when sufficiently strong. The discontinuities originate from the antiferromagnetic Ising limit for both molecules. The results show how spatial symmetry dictates the magnetic response of the $I_h$ fullerene molecules.

  2 citations

• Optimizing Floquet engineering for non-equilibrium steady states with gradient-based methods

  Alberto Castro, Shunsuke A. Sato

  SciPost Phys. 15, 029 (2023) · published 26 July 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Non-equilibrium steady states are created when a periodically driven quantum system is also incoherently interacting with an environment - as it is the case in most realistic situations. The notion of Floquet engineering refers to the manipulation of the properties of systems under periodic perturbations. Although it more frequently refers to the coherent states of isolated systems (or to the transient phase for states that are weakly coupled to the environment), it may sometimes be of more interest to consider the final steady states that are reached after decoherence and dissipation take place. In this work, we demonstrate how those final states can be optimally tuned with respect to a given predefined metric, such as for example the maximization of the temporal average value of some observable, by using multicolor periodic perturbations. We show a computational framework that can be used for that purpose, and exemplify the concept using a simple model for the nitrogen-vacancy center in diamond: the goal in this case is to find the driving periodic magnetic field that maximizes a time-averaged spin component. We show that, for example, this technique permits to prepare states whose spin values are forbidden in thermal equilibrium at any temperature.

  2 citations

• Transitions in Xenes between excitonic, topological and trivial insulator phases: Influence of screening, band dispersion and external electric field

  Olivia Pulci, Paola Gori, Davide Grassano, Marco D'Alessandro, Friedhelm Bechstedt

  SciPost Phys. 15, 025 (2023) · published 24 July 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Using a variational approach, the binding energies $E_b$ of the lowest bound excitons in Xenes under varying electric field are investigated. The internal exciton motion is described both by Dirac electron dispersion and in effective-mass approximation, while the screened electron-hole attraction is modeled by a Rytova-Keldysh potential with a 2D electronic polarizability $\alpha_{2D}$. The most important parameters as spin-orbit-induced gap $E_g$, Fermi velocity $v_F$ and $\alpha_{2D}$ are taken from ab initio density functional theory calculations. In addition, $\alpha_{2D}$ is approximated in two different ways. The relation of $E_b$ and $E_g$ is ruled by the screening. The existence of an excitonic insulator phase with $E_b>E_g$ sensitively depends on the chosen $\alpha_{2D}$. The values of $E_g$ and $\alpha_{2D}$ are strongly modified by a vertical external electric bias $U$, which defines a transition from the topological into a trivial insulator at $U=E_g/2$, with the exception of plumbene. Within the Dirac approximation, but also within the effective mass description of the kinetic energy, the treatment of screening dominates the appearance or non-appearance of an excitonic insulator phase. Gating does not change the results: the prediction done at zero electric field is confirmed when a vertical electric field is applied. Finally, Many-Body perturbation theory approaches based on the Green's function method, applied to stanene, confirm the absence of an excitonic insulator phase, thus validating our results obtained by ab initio modeling of $\alpha_{2D}$.

  3 citations

• Pressure-induced transitions in FePS$_3$: Structural, magnetic and electronic properties

  Shiyu Deng, Siyu Chen, Bartomeu Monserrat, Emilio Artacho, Siddharth S. Saxena

  SciPost Phys. 15, 020 (2023) · published 20 July 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  FePS$_3$ is a prototype van der Waals layered antiferromagnet and a Mott insulator under ambient conditions, which has been recently reported to go through a pressure-induced dimensionality crossover and an insulator-to-metal transition. These transitions also lead to the appearance of a novel magnetic metallic state. To further understand these emergent structural and physical properties, we have performed a first-principles study using van der Waals and Hubbard $U$ corrected density functional theory including a random structure search. Our computational study attempts to interpret the experimental coexistence of the low- and intermediate-pressure phases and we predict a novel high-pressure phase with distinctive dimensionality and different possible origins of metallicity.

  2 citations

• Bloch-Lorentz magnetoresistance oscillations in delafossites

  Kostas Vilkelis, Lin Wang, Anton Akhmerov

  SciPost Phys. 15, 019 (2023) · published 20 July 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Recent measurements of the out-of-plane magnetoresistance of delafossites (PdCoO$_2$ and PtCoO$_2$) observed oscillations closely resembling the Aharonov-Bohm effect. Here, we show that the magnetoresistance oscillations are explained by the Bloch-like oscillations of the out-of-plane electron trajectories. We develop a semiclassical theory of these Bloch-Lorentz oscillations and show that they are a consequence of the ballistic motion and quasi-2D dispersion of delafossites. Our model identifies the sample wall scattering to be the most likely factor limiting the visibility of these Bloch-Lorentz oscillations in existing experiments.

  1 citation

• Accelerating equilibrium spin-glass simulations using quantum annealers via generative deep learning

  Giuseppe Scriva, Emanuele Costa, Benjamin McNaughton, Sebastiano Pilati

  SciPost Phys. 15, 018 (2023) · published 20 July 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Adiabatic quantum computers, such as the quantum annealers commercialized by D-Wave Systems Inc., are routinely used to tackle combinatorial optimization problems. In this article, we show how to exploit them to accelerate equilibrium Markov chain Monte Carlo simulations of computationally challenging spin-glass models at low but finite temperatures. This is achieved by training generative neural networks on data produced by a D-Wave quantum annealer, and then using them to generate smart proposals for the Metropolis-Hastings algorithm. In particular, we explore hybrid schemes by combining single spin-flip and neural proposals, as well as D-Wave and classical Monte Carlo training data. The hybrid algorithm outperforms the single spin-flip Metropolis-Hastings algorithm. It is competitive with parallel tempering in terms of correlation times, with the significant benefit of a much shorter equilibration time.

  5 citations

• Exceptional points in the Baxter-Fendley free parafermion model

  Robert A. Henry, Murray T. Batchelor

  SciPost Phys. 15, 016 (2023) · published 19 July 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Certain spin chains, such as the quantum Ising chain, have free fermion spectra which can be expressed as the sum of decoupled two-level fermionic systems. Free parafermions are a generalisation of this idea to $\mathbb{Z}_N$-symmetric clock models. In 1989 Baxter discovered a non-Hermitian but $\mathcal{PT}$-symmetric model directly generalising the Ising chain, which was later described by Fendley as a free parafermion spectrum. By extending the model's magnetic field parameter to the complex plane, it is shown that a series of exceptional points emerges, where the quasienergies defining the free spectrum become degenerate. An analytic expression for the locations of these points is derived, and various numerical investigations are performed. These exceptional points also exist in the Ising chain with a complex transverse field. Although the model is not in general $\mathcal{PT}$-symmetric at these exceptional points, their proximity can have a profound impact on the model on the $\mathcal{PT}$-symmetric real line. Furthermore, in certain cases an exceptional point may appear on the real line (with negative field).

  10 citations

• Universal Chern number statistics in random matrix fields

  Or Swartzberg, Michael Wilkinson, Omri Gat

  SciPost Phys. 15, 015 (2023) · published 19 July 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We investigate the probability distribution of Chern numbers (quantum Hall conductance integers) for a parametric version of the GUE random matrix ensemble, which is a model for a chaotic or disordered system. The numerically-calculated single-band Chern number statistics agree well with predictions based on an earlier study [O. Gat and M. Wilkinson, SciPost Phys., 10, 149, (2021)] of the statistics of the quantum adiabatic curvature, when the parametric correlation length is small. However, contrary to an earlier conjecture, we find that the gap Chern numbers are correlated, and that the correlation is weak but slowly-decaying. Also, the statistics of weighted sums of Chern numbers differs markedly from predictions based upon the hypothesis that gap Chern numbers are uncorrelated. All our results are consistent with the universality hypothesis described in the earlier paper, including in the previously unstudied regime of large correlation length, where the Chern statistics is highly non-Gaussian.

  1 citation

• Special transition and extraordinary phase on the surface of a two-dimensional quantum Heisenberg antiferromagnet

  Chengxiang Ding, Wenjing Zhu, Wenan Guo, Long Zhang

  SciPost Phys. 15, 012 (2023) · published 18 July 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  Continuous phase transitions exhibit richer critical phenomena on the surface than in the bulk, because distinct surface universality classes can be realized at the same bulk critical point by tuning the surface interactions. The exploration of surface critical behavior provides a window looking into higher-dimensional boundary conformal field theories. In this work, we study the surface critical behavior of a two-dimensional (2D) quantum critical Heisenberg model by tuning the surface coupling strength, and discover a direct special transition on the surface from the ordinary phase into an extraordinary phase. The extraordinary phase has a long-range antiferromagnetic order on the surface, in sharp contrast to the logarithmic decaying spin correlations in the 3D classical O(3) model. The special transition point has a new set of critical exponents, $y_{s}=0.86(4)$ and $\eta_{\parallel}=-0.33(1)$, which are distinct from the special transition of the classical O(3) model and indicate a new surface universality class of the 3D O(3) Wilson-Fisher theory.

  9 citations

• LinReTraCe: The linear response transport centre

  Matthias Pickem, Emanuele Maggio, Jan M. Tomczak

  SciPost Phys. Codebases 16 (2023) · published 17 July 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

  We describe the "Linear Response Transport Centre" (LinReTraCe), a package for the simulation of transport properties of solids. LinReTraCe captures quantum (in)coherence effects beyond semi-classical Boltzmann techniques, while incurring similar numerical costs. The enabling algorithmic innovation is a semi-analytical evaluation of Kubo formulae for resistivities and the coefficients of Hall, Seebeck and Nernst. We detail the program's architecture, its interface and usage with electronic-structure packages such as WIEN2k, VASP, and Wannier90, as well as versatile tight-binding settings.

  7 citations