Gapless Region Research Articles

Imaging the Breakdown and Restoration of Topological Protection in Magnetic Topological Insulator MnBi2Te4.

Quantum anomalous Hall (QAH) insulators transport charge without resistance along topologically protected chiral 1D edge states. Yet, in magnetic topological insulators to date, topological protection is far from robust, with zero-magnetic field QAH effect only realized at temperatures an order of magnitude below the Néel temperature TN, though small magnetic fields can stabilize QAH effect. Understanding why topological protection breaks down is therefore essential to realizing QAH effect at higher temperatures. Here a scanning tunneling microscope is used to directly map the size of exchange gap (Eg,ex) and its spatial fluctuation in the QAH insulator 5-layer MnBi2Te4. Long-range fluctuations of Eg,ex are observed, with values ranging between 0 (gapless) and 70 meV, appearing to be uncorrelated to individual surface point defects. The breakdown of topological protection is directly imaged, showing that the gapless edge state, the hallmark signature of a QAH insulator, hybridizes with extended gapless regions in the bulk. Finally, it is unambiguously demonstrated that the gapless regions originate from magnetic disorder, by demonstrating that a small magnetic field restores Eg,ex in these regions, explaining the recovery of topological protection in magnetic fields. The results indicate that overcoming magnetic disorder is the key to exploiting the unique properties of QAH insulators.

Majorana excitations in the anisotropic Kitaev model with an ordered-flux structure

We investigate the anisotropic S = 1/2 Kitaev model on the honeycomb lattice with the ordered-flux structure. By diagonalizing the Majorana Hamiltonian for the flux configuration, we find two distinct gapped quantum spin liquids. One of them is the gapped state realized in the large anisotropic case, where low energy properties are described by the toric code. On the other hand, when the system has small anisotropy, the other gapped quantum spin liquid is stabilized by the ordered-flux configuration. Since these two gapped quantum spin liquids are separated by the gapless region, these are not adiabatically connected to each other.

Quench spectroscopy of a disordered quantum system

The characterization of excitations in disordered quantum systems is a central issue in connection with glass physics and many-body localization. Here, we show that quench spectroscopy of a disordered model, as realized from its out-of-equilibrium dynamics following a global quench, allows us to fully characterize the spectral properties of the disordered phases. In the Bose-Hubbard model, a clear signature of gapless excitations in momentum-resolved spectroscopy enables us to accurately locate the Mott insulator to Bose glass transition, while the presence or absence of a well-defined soundlike mode distinguishes the superfluid from the Bose glass phase. Moreover, spatially-resolved spectroscopy provides local spectral properties and allows us to extract the typical spacing of gapless regions, giving a second independent way to uniquely identify all three phases. Our findings have far-ranging implications for a variety of experimental platforms, and offer a powerful and versatile probe of the low-energy phases of disordered systems.

Thermodynamic limit of the spin- frac{1}{2} XYZ spin chain with the antiperiodic boundary condition

Based on its off-diagonal Bethe ansatz solution, we study the thermodynamic limit of the spin- frac{1}{2} XYZ spin chain with the antiperiodic boundary condition. The key point of our method is that there exist some degenerate points of the crossing parameter ηm,l, at which the associated inhomogeneous T − Q relation becomes a homogeneous one. This makes extrapolating the formulae deriving from the homogeneous one to an arbitrary η with O(N−2) corrections for a large N possible. The ground state energy and elementary excitations of the system are obtained. By taking the trigonometric limit, we also give the results of antiperiodic XXZ spin chain within the gapless region in the thermodynamic limit, which does not have any degenerate points.

Valley current splitter in minimally twisted bilayer graphene

We study the electronic transport properties at the intersection of three topological zero-lines as the elementary current partition node that arises in minimally twisted bilayer graphene. Unlike the partition laws of two intersecting zero-lines, we find that (i) the incoming current can be partitioned into both left-right adjacent topological channels and that (ii) the forward-propagating current is nonzero. By tuning the Fermi energy from the charge-neutrality point to a band edge, the currents partitioned into the three outgoing channels become nearly equal. Moreover, we find that current partition node can be designed as a perfect valley filter and energy splitter controlled by electric gating. By changing the relative electric field magnitude, the intersection of three topological zero-lines can transform smoothly into a single zero line, and the current partition can be controlled precisely. We explore the available methods for modulating this device systematically by changing the Fermi energy, the energy gap size, and the size of central gapless region. The current partition is also influenced by magnetic fields and the system size. Our results provide a microscopic depiction of the electronic transport properties around a unit cell of minimally twisted bilayer graphene and have far-reaching implications in the design of electron-beam splitters and interferometer devices.

Suppressing quasiparticle poisoning with a voltage-controlled filter

Topological quantum computation requires parity conservation of the bound states in the extended superconducting networks in which nonequilibrium quasiparticles are often observed. Here, the authors demonstrate that a section of a nanowire with epitaxial aluminum and hard superconducting gap can prevent the quasiparticle tunneling between the two gapless regions. Such a quasiparticle filter can be used to prevent spreading of nonequilibrium quasiparticles to regions of the device that need to have conserved parity.

Thin film of a topological insulator as a spin Hall insulator

We study spin conductivity of the surface states in a thin film of a topological insulator with Kubo formulas. Hybridization between the different sides of the film opens a gap at the Dirac point. We found that in the gapped region spin conductivity remains finite. In the gapless region near the band gap spin conductivity is enhanced. These findings make a thin film of a topological insulator as a promising material for spintronic applications.

Universal scrambling in gapless quantum spin chains

Information scrambling, characterized by the out-of-time-ordered correlator (OTOC), has attracted much attention, as it sheds new light on chaotic dynamics in quantum many-body systems. The scale invariance, which appears near the quantum critical region in condensed matter physics, is considered to be important for the fast decay of the OTOC. In this paper, we focus on the one-dimensional spin-1/2 XXZ model, which exhibits quantum criticality in a certain parameter region, and investigate the relationship between scrambling and the scale invariance. We quantify scrambling by the averaged OTOC over the Pauli operator basis, which is related to the operator space entanglement entropy (OSEE). Using the infinite time-evolving block decimation method, we numerically calculate time dependence of the OSEE in the early-time region in the thermodynamic limit. We show that the averaged OTOC decays faster in the gapless region than in the gapped region. In the gapless region, the averaged OTOC behaves in the same manner regardless of the anisotropy parameter. This result is consistent with the fact that the low-energy excitations of the gapless region belong to the same universality class as the Tomonaga-Luttinger liquid with the central charge $c=1$. Furthermore, we estimate $c$ by fitting the numerical data of the OSEE with an analytical result of the two-dimensional conformal field theory, and confirm that $c$ is close to unity. Thus, our numerical results suggest that the scale invariance leads to a universal behavior of the OTOC that is independent of the anisotropic parameter, which reflects the universality of the two-dimensional conformal field theory at low temperatures. Although the one-dimensional XXZ model is integrable, our results suggest such a universal behavior of generic nonintegrable systems, because the Tomonaga-Luttinger liquid serves as a low-energy effective theory for many nonintegrable and integrable systems. On the other hand, the OTOC in our numerical result does not exhibit the exponential decay, as our parameter regime is far from the semiclassical limit.

Disorder-Induced Quantum Spin Liquid in Spin Ice Pyrochlores.

We propose that in a certain class of magnetic materials, known as non-Kramers "spin ice," disorder induces quantum entanglement. Instead of driving glassy behavior, disorder provokes quantum superpositions of spins throughout the system and engenders an associated emergent gauge structure and set of fractional excitations. More precisely, disorder transforms a classical phase governed by a large entropy, classical spin ice, into a quantum spin liquid governed by entanglement. As the degree of disorder is increased, the system transitions between (i)a "regular" Coulombic spin liquid, (ii)a phase known as "Mott glass," which contains rare gapless regions in real space, but whose behavior on long length scales is only modified quantitatively, and (iii)a true glassy phase for random distributions with large width or large mean amplitude.

Direct three-dimensional ordering of quasi-one-dimensional quantum dimer system near critical fields

As the temperature lowers in the gapless region, quantum quasi-1D spin systems show one-dimensional (1D) short-range ordering (SRO) corresponding to a Tomonaga-Luttinger liquid (TLL) by the interaction within chains, and then at lower temperatures where the small interchain interaction cannot be ignored, they have a three-dimensional (3D) long- range ordered (LRO, BEC) phase. This generally accepted scenario for the dimensional crossover of quasi-1D spin ordering, however, is debatable around the critical field, because the 1D SRO (TLL) regime has a linear boundary on the $H$-$T$ phase diagram, while the 3D LRO transition temperature has a convex shape. To this dimensionality paradox around the critical field, the authors have given the solution, experimentally by detailed analyses of the specific heat and ac susceptibility for bond-alternating antiferromagnetic chains in pentafluorophenyl nitronyl nitroxide (F${}_{5}$PNN). They reveal the existence of a definite field region near a critical field, where 3D LRO (BEC) directly occurs without passing through 1D SRO region at higher temperatures, even if the interchain interaction is sufficiently small compared to the intrachain one.

The a-cycle problem for transverse Ising ring

Traditionally, the transverse Ising model is mapped to the fermionic c-cycle problem, which neglects the boundary effect due to thermodynamic limit. If persisting on a perfect periodic boundary condition, we can get a so-called a-cycle problem that has not been treated seriously so far (Lieb et al 1961 Ann. Phys. 16 407). In this work, we show a little surprising but exact result in this respect. We find the odevity of the number of lattice sites, N, in the a-cycle problem plays an unexpected role even in the thermodynamic limit, , due to the boundary constraint. We pay special attention to the system with , which is in contrast to the one with , because the former suffers a ring frustration. As a new effect, we find the ring frustration induces a low-energy gapless spectrum above the ground state. By proving a theorem for a new type of Toeplitz determinant, we demonstrate that the ground state in the gapless region exhibits a peculiar longitudinal spin–spin correlation. The entangled nature of the ground state is also disclosed by the evaluation of its entanglement entropy. At low temperature, new behavior of specific heat is predicted. We also propose an experimental protocol for observing the new phenomenon due to the ring frustration.

Dynamical merging of Dirac points in the periodically driven Kitaev honeycomb model

We study the effect of a half wave rectified sinusoidal electromagnetic (EM) wave on the Kitaev honeycomb model with an additional magneto-electric coupling term {arising due to induced polarization of the bonds. Within the framework of Floquet analysis, we show that merging of a pair of Dirac points in the gapless region of the Kitaev model leading to a semi-Dirac spectrum is indeed possible} by externally varying the amplitude and the phase of the EM field.

Magnetism-induced massive Dirac spectra and topological defects in the surface state of Cr-doped Bi2Se3-bilayer topological insulators

Proximity-induced magnetic effects on the surface Dirac spectra of topological insulators are investigated by scanning tunneling spectroscopic studies of bilayer structures consisting of undoped Bi2Se3 thin films on top of Cr-doped Bi2Se3 layers. For thickness of the top Bi2Se3 layer equal to or smaller than 3 quintuple layers, a spatially inhomogeneous surface spectral gap Δ opens up below a characteristic temperature which is much higher than the bulk Curie temperature determined from the anomalous Hall resistance. The mean value and spatial homogeneity of the gap Δ generally increase with increasing c-axis magnetic field (H) and increasing Cr doping level (x), suggesting that the physical origin of this surface gap is associated with proximity-induced c-axis ferromagnetism. On the other hand, the temperature (T) dependence of Δ is non-monotonic, showing initial increase below which is followed by a ‘dip’ and then rises again, reaching maximum at T ≪ These phenomena may be attributed to proximity magnetism induced by two types of contributions with different temperature dependences: a three-dimensional contribution from the bulk magnetism that dominates at low T, and a two-dimensional contribution associated with the RKKY interactions mediated by surface Dirac fermions, which dominates at ≪ T < In addition to the observed proximity magnetism, spatially localized sharp resonant spectra are found along the boundaries of gapped and gapless regions. These spectral resonances are long-lived at H = 0, with their occurrences being most prominent near and becoming suppressed under strong c-axis magnetic fields. We attribute these phenomena to magnetic impurity-induced topological defects in the spin texture of surface Dirac fermions, with the magnetic impurities being isolated Cr impurities distributed near the interface of the bilayer system. The long-term stability of these topologically protected two-level states may find potential applications to quantum information technology.

Quasiadiabatic dynamics of ultracold bosonic atoms in a one-dimensional optical superlattice

We study the quasiadiabatic dynamics of a one-dimensional system of ultracold bosonic atoms loaded in an optical superlattice. Focusing on a slow linear variation in time of the superlattice potential, the system is driven from a conventional Mott insulator phase to a superlattice-induced Mott insulator, crossing in between a gapless critical superfluid region. Due to the presence of a gapless region, a number of defects depending on the velocity of the quench appear. Our findings suggest a power-law dependence similar to the Kibble-Zurek mechanism for intermediate values of the quench rate. For the temporal ranges of the quench dynamics that we considered, the scaling of defects depends nontrivially on the width of the superfluid region.

Effect of weak disorder on delocalization properties of gapped graphene superlattices

We study the effect of weak disorder on the delocalization properties of gapped graphene superlattice (SL) formed by periodically located rectangular potential barriers. We consider two types of the SLs: the SLs with uniform gap and SLs consisting of alternating layers of gapped and gapless graphene regions. Using the perturbative approach we obtain an analytical expression for the inverse localization length (ILL) derived for the case of randomly fluctuating geometric and energetic parameters. In the first case, when the barrier (well) width fluctuates around its mean value, the corresponding equation for the ILL reveals the presence of the Fabry–Perot resonances, at which the localization length diverges. These resonances are exact, i.e., are stored in any degree of disorder. It has been found that the localization properties manifest stronger for the particles with energies lying in the non-resonant bands where our approach is extremely sensitive to the degree of disorder. For the case of weakly fluctuating both barrier and well widths we analytically obtain ILL taking correlations into account. The main effect of the correlations, which lead to an increase (or decrease) in the localization length, was revealed near the double resonance arising at coincidence of two Fabry–Perot resonances associated with barrier and well widths. The random fluctuations of the potential strength also lead to the delocalization resonances. However, they exist only in a weak-disorder approximation. We found that, for an array composed of alternating strips of gapless and gapped graphene modifications these resonances can appear only for normally incident particles in contrast to the SL with a uniform gap. For such particles, the delocalization resonances occur also in the purely random potential. This means, in particular, that in the one-dimensional case, not all the states of the massive Dirac particles are localized in the presence of weak disorder.

Coexistence of density wave and superfluid order in a dipolar Fermi gas

We analyse the coexistence of superfluid and density wave (stripe) order in a quasi-two-dimensional gas of dipolar fermions aligned by an external field. Remarkably, the anisotropic nature of the dipolar interaction allows for such a coexistence in a large region of the zero temperature phase diagram. In this region, the repulsive part of the interaction drives the stripe formation and the attractive part induces the pairing, resulting in a supersolid with $p$-wave Cooper pairs aligned along the stripes. From a momentum space perspective, the stability of the supersolid phase is due to the fact that the stripe order renders the Fermi surface only partially gapped, leaving gapless regions that are most important for $p$-wave pairing. We finally demonstrate how this supersolid phase can be detected in time-of-flight experiments.

Global quantum discord in matrix product states and the application

Global quantum discord (GQD) is a measure of quantum correlation for multi-site quantum states. In this paper, we propose an efficient procedure to calculate global quantum discord (Gn) for consecutive n-site subsystems in infinite-size matrix product states (MPSs). We apply the method to study the scaling behavior of Gn in several one-dimensional infinite quantum spin chains, i.e., (1) a three-site interaction model whose ground state can be exactly expressed as MPSs, and (2) a spin-12 XXZ chain whose ground state is approximately expressed as MPSs with the help of infinite time-evolving block decimation (iTEBD) algorithm. In both models, as the increase of n, Gn shows an approximately linear growth. Unambiguous clue for the convergence of the incremental ΔGn=Gn−Gn−1 is observed when n is large enough. Moreover, in non-critical (gapped) regions ΔGn converges very fast, while in critical (gapless) regions it converges relatively slow. The behaviors are explained in a model-independent physical picture with finite-range correlations. Based on these results, we propose to use “discord per site” (Gnn) to describe the global correlations in infinite-size spin chains. Moreover, we find that the global discord shows a size-independent maximum at the infinite-order quantum phase transition point of the XXZ model.

Low-energy Majorana states in spin liquid transitions in a three-dimensional Kitaev model

A three-dimensional Kitaev model on a hyperhoneycomb lattice is investigated numerically at finite temperature. The Kitaev model is one of the solvable quantum spin models, where the ground state is given by gapped and gapless spin liquids, depending on the anisotropy of the interactions. This model can be rewritten as a free Majorana fermion system coupled with Z2 variables. The density of states of Majorana fermions shows an excitation gap in the gapped region, while it is semimetallic in the gapless region reflecting the Dirac node. Performing the Monte Carlo simulation, we calculate the temperature dependence of the Majorana spectra. We find that the semimetallic dip is filled as temperature increases in the gapless region, but surprisingly, the spectrum develops an excitation gap in the region near the gapless-gapped boundary. Such changes of the low-energy spectrum appear sharply at the transition temperature from the spin liquid to the paramagnetic state. The results indicate that thermal fluctuations of the Z2 fields significantly influence the low-energy state of Majorana fermions, especially in the spin liquid formation.

Quantum Spin Liquid in Spin 1/2J1–J2Heisenberg Model on Square Lattice: Many-Variable Variational Monte Carlo Study Combined with Quantum-Number Projections

The nature of quantum spin liquids is studied for the spin-$1/2$ antiferromagnetic Heisenberg model on a square lattice containing exchange interactions between nearest-neighbor sites, $J_1$, and those between next-nearest-neighbor sites, $J_2$. We perform variational Monte Carlo simulations together with the quantum-number-projection technique and clarify the phase diagram in the ground state together with its excitation spectra. We obtain the nonmagnetic phase in the region $0.4< J_2/J_1\le 0.6$ sandwiched by the staggered and stripe antiferromagnetic (AF) phases. Our direct calculations of the spin gap support the notion that the triplet excitation from the singlet ground state is gapless in the range of $0.4 < J_2/J_1 \le 0.5$, while the gapped valence-bond-crystal (VBC) phase is stabilized for $0.5 < J_2/J_1 \le 0.6$. The VBC order is likely to have the columnar symmetry with a spontaneous symmetry breaking of the $C_{4v}$ symmetry. The power-law behaviors of the spin-spin and dimer-dimer correlation functions in the gapless region are consistent with the emergence of the algebraic quantum-spin-liquid phase (critical phase). The exponent of the spin correlation $\langle S(0)S(r)\rangle \propto 1/r^{z+\eta}$ at a long distance $r$ appears to increase from $z+\eta\sim 1$ at $J_2/J_1\sim0.4$ toward the continuous transition to the VBC phase at $J_1/J_1\sim0.5$. Our results, however, do not fully exclude the possibility of a direct quantum transition between the staggered AF and VBC phases with a wide critical region and deconfined criticality.

Possibility of adiabatic transport of a Majorana edge state through an extended gapless region.

In the context of slow quenching dynamics of a p-wave superconducting chain, it has been shown that a Majorana edge state cannot be adiabatically transported from one topological phase to the other separated by a quantum critical line. On the other hand, the inclusion of a phase factor in the hopping term, which breaks the effective time-reversal invariance, results in an extended gapless region between two topological phases. We show that for a finite chain with an open boundary condition, there exists a nonzero probability that a Majorana edge state can be adiabatically transported from one topological phase to the other across this gapless region following a slow quench of the superconducting term; this happens for an optimum transit time, which is proportional to the system size and diverges for a thermodynamically large chain. We attribute this phenomenon to the mixing of the Majorana only with low-lying inverted bulk states. Remarkably, the Majorana state always persists with the same probability even after the quenching is stopped. For a periodic chain, on the other hand, we find a Kibble-Zurek scaling of the defect density with a renormalized rate of quenching.