Quasiperiodic Disorder Research Articles

Dual mapping and quantum criticality in quasiperiodic Su-Schrieffer-Heeger chains

We study a class of off-diagonal quasiperiodic hopping models described by a one-dimensional Su-Schrieffer-Heeger chain with quasiperiodic modulations. With regard to these models, we unveil a general dual-mapping relation in parameter space of the dimerization strength $\ensuremath{\lambda}$ and the quasiperiodic modulation strength $V$, regardless of specific details of quasiperiodic modulations. Moreover, we demonstrated semianalytically and numerically that under the specific quasiperiodic modulation, quantum criticality, namely the criticality of wave functions, can emerge and persist in a wide parameter space. These unusual results provide a distinctive paradigm compared with the diagonal quasiperiodic systems and perspectives for future investigations on quasiperiodic disorder.

Observation of topological phase with critical localization in a quasi-periodic lattice

Disorder and localization have dramatic influence on the topological properties of a quantum system. While strong disorder can close the band gap thus depriving topological materials of topological features, disorder may also induce topology from trivial band structures, wherein topological invariants are shared by completely localized states. Here we experimentally investigate a fundamentally distinct scenario where topology is identified in a critically localized regime, with eigenstates neither fully extended nor completely localized. Adopting the technique of momentum-lattice engineering for ultracold atoms, we implement a one-dimensional, generalized Aubry-André model with both diagonal and off-diagonal quasi-periodic disorder in momentum space, and characterize its localization and topological properties through dynamic observables. We then demonstrate the impact of interactions on the critically localized topological state, as a first experimental endeavor toward the clarification of many-body critical phase, the critical analogue of the many-body localized state.

Mobility edges and reentrant localization in one-dimensional dimerized non-Hermitian quasiperiodic lattice* *Project supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (Grant Nos. 2016YFA0300600 and 2016YFA0302104), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 12074410, 12047502, 11934015, 11947301, and 11774397), the Strategic Priority Research Program of Chinese Academy of Sciences (Grant No. XDB33000000), and the Fellowship of

The mobility edges and reentrant localization transitions are studied in one-dimensional dimerized lattice with non-Hermitian either uniform or staggered quasiperiodic potentials. We find that the non-Hermitian uniform quasiperiodic disorder can induce an intermediate phase where the extended states coexist with the localized ones, which implies that the system has mobility edges. The localization transition is accompanied by the symmetry breaking transition. While if the non-Hermitian quasiperiodic disorder is staggered, we demonstrate the existence of multiple intermediate phases and multiple reentrant localization transitions based on the finite size scaling analysis. Interestingly, some already localized states will become extended states and can also be localized again for certain non-Hermitian parameters. The reentrant localization transitions are associated with the intermediate phases hosting mobility edges. Besides, we also find that the non-Hermiticity can break the reentrant localization transition where only one intermediate phase survives. More detailed information about the mobility edges and reentrant localization transitions are presented by analyzing the eigenenergy spectrum, inverse participation ratio, and normalized participation ratio.

Competition and interplay between topology and quasi-periodic disorder in Thouless pumping of ultracold atoms

Robustness against perturbations lies at the heart of topological phenomena. If, however, a perturbation such as disorder becomes dominant, it may cause a topological phase transition between topologically non-trivial and trivial phases. Here we experimentally reveal the competition and interplay between topology and quasi-periodic disorder in a Thouless pump realized with ultracold atoms in an optical lattice, by creating a quasi-periodic potential from weak to strong regimes in a controllable manner. We demonstrate a disorder-induced pumping in which the presence of quasi-periodic disorder can induce a non-trivial pump for a specific pumping sequence, while no pump is observed in the clean limit. Our highly controllable system, which can also straightforwardly incorporate interatomic interaction, could be a unique platform for studying various disorder-related novel effects in a wide range of topological quantum phenomena.

Mobility edges in one-dimensional models with quasi-periodic disorder

We study the mobility edges in a variety of one-dimensional tight binding models with slowly varying quasi-periodic disorders. It is found that the quasi-periodic disordered models can be approximated by an ensemble of periodic models. The mobility edges can be determined by the overlaps of the energy bands of these periodic models. We demonstrate that this method provides an efficient way to find out the precise location of mobility edge in quasi-periodic disordered models. Based on this approximate method, we also propose an index to indicate the degree of localization of each eigenstate.

Reentrant Localization Transition in a Quasiperiodic Chain.

Systems with quasiperiodic disorder are known to exhibit a localization transition in low dimensions. After a critical strength of disorder, all the states of the system become localized, thereby ceasing the particle motion in the system. However, in our analysis, we show that in a one-dimensional dimerized lattice with staggered quasiperiodic disorder, after the localization transition, some of the localized eigenstates become extended for a range of intermediate disorder strengths. Eventually, the system undergoes a second localization transition at a higher disorder strength, leading to all states being localized. We also show that the two localization transitions are associated with the mobility regions hosting the single-particle mobility edges. We establish this reentrant localization transition by analyzing the eigenspectra, participation ratios, and the density of states of the system.

Topological Anderson phase in quasi-periodic waveguide lattices.

The topological trivial band of a lattice can be driven into a topological phase by disorder in the system. This so-called topological Anderson phase has been predicted and observed for uncorrelated static disorder, while in the presence of correlated disorder, conflicting results are found. Here we consider a Su-Schrieffer-Heeger waveguide lattice in the trivial topological phase and show that quasi-periodic disorder in the coupling constants can drive the lattice into a topological nontrivial phase. A method to detect the emergence of the topological Anderson phase, based on light dynamics at the edge of a quasi-periodic waveguide lattice, is suggested.

Stability of Weyl semimetals with quasiperiodic disorder

Weyl semimetals are phases of matter with excitations effectively described by massless Dirac fermions. Their critical nature makes unclear the persistence of such phase in presence of disorder. We present a theorem ensuring the stability of the semimetallic phase in presence of weak quasiperiodic disorder. The proof relies on the subtle interplay of the relativistic Quantum Field Theory description combined with number theoretical properties used in KAM theory.

Critical properties of the ground-state localization-delocalization transition in the many-particle Aubry-André model

As opposed to random disorder, which localizes single-particle wave-functions in 1D at arbitrarily small disorder strengths, there is a localization-delocalization transition for quasi-periodic disorder in the 1D Aubry-Andr\'e model at a finite disorder strength. On the single-particle level, many properties of the ground-state critical behavior have been revealed by applying a real-space renormalization-group scheme; the critical properties are determined solely by the continued fraction expansion of the incommensurate frequency of the disorder. Here, we investigate the many-particle localization-delocalization transition in the Aubry-Andr\'e model with and without interactions. In contrast to the single-particle case, we find that the critical exponents depend on a Diophantine equation relating the incommensurate frequency of the disorder and the filling fraction which generalizes the dependence, in the single-particle spectrum, on the continued fraction expansion of the incommensurate frequency. This equation can be viewed as a generalization of the resonance condition in the commensurate case. When interactions are included, numerical evidence suggests that interactions may be irrelevant at at least some of these critical points, meaning that the critical exponent relations obtained from the Diophantine equation may actually survive in the interacting case.

Study of counterintuitive transport properties in the Aubry-André-Harper model via entanglement entropy and persistent current

The single particle eigenstates of the Aubry-Andr\'e-Harper model are known to show a delocalization-localization transition at a finite strength of the quasi-periodic disorder. In this work, we point out that an intimate relationship exists between the sub-band structure of the spectrum and transport properties of the model. To capture the transport properties we have not only used a variety of single-particle measures like inverse participation ratio, and von Neumann entropy, but also many-particle measures such as persistent current and its variance, and many body entanglement entropy. The many-particle measures are very sensitive to the sub-band structure of the spectrum. Even in the delocalized phase, surprisingly the entanglement entropy is substantially suppressed when the Fermi level is in the band gaps whereas the persistent current is vanishingly small for the same locations of the Fermi level. The entanglement entropy seems to follow area-law exclusively for these special locations of Fermi level or filling fractions of free fermions. A study of the standard deviation of persistent current offers further distinguishing features for the special fillings. In the delocalized phase, the standard deviation vs. mean persistent current curves are discontinuous for the non-special values of filling fractions and continuous (closed) for the special values of filling fractions whereas in the localized phase, these curves become straight lines for both types of filling fractions. We have also discussed how the results depend on the system size. Our results, specially on the persistent current, can potentially be tested experimentally using the present day set-ups based on ultra-cold atoms.

Quasiperiodic Branches in the Thermoelectricity of Nanowires

Branches attached to a nanowire may significantly modify the transport of excitations along it due to wave interference. In this article, we study the thermoelectric properties of thin nanowires with quasiperiodically placed branches by means of a real-space renormalization plus convolution method developed for the Kubo–Greenwood formula, in which tight-binding and Born models are respectively used for the calculation of electrical and lattice thermal conductivities. The results show a substantial growth of the thermoelectric figure of merit (ZT) induced by the long-range quasiperiodic disorder, because it diminishes the thermal conduction of long wavelength acoustic phonons because such phonons are usually not altered by local defects nor by impurities. A remarkable reduction of the thermal conduction can be further achieved by using low sound velocity materials.

Topological phase transition in the quasiperiodic disordered Su–Schriffer–Heeger chain

We study the stability of the topological phase in one-dimensional Su–Schrieffer–Heeger chain subject to the quasiperiodic hopping disorder. Two different hopping disorder configurations are investigated, one is the Aubry–André quasiperiodic disorder without mobility edges and the other is the slowly varying quasiperiodic disorder with mobility edges. Interestingly, we find topological phase transitions occur at the critical quasiperiodic disorder strengths which have an exact linear relation with the dimerization strengths for both disorder configurations. We further investigate the localized property of the Su–Schrieffer–Heeger chain with the slowly varying quasiperiodic disorder, and identify that there exist mobility edges in the spectrum when the dimerization strength is unequal to 1. These interesting features of models will shed light on the study of interplay between topological and disordered systems.

Emergent dimerization and localization in disordered quantum chains

We uncover a novel mechanism for inducing a gapful phase in interacting many-body quantum chains. The mechanism is nonperturbative, being triggered only in the presence of both strong interactions and strong aperiodic (disordered) modulation. In the context of the critical antiferromagnetic spin-1/2 XXZ chain, we identify an emerging dimerization, which removes the system from criticality and stabilizes the novel phase. This mechanism is shown to be quite general in strongly interacting quantum chains in the presence of strongly modulated quasiperiodic disorder, which is, surprisingly, perturbatively irrelevant. Finally, we also characterize the associated quantum phase transition via the corresponding critical exponents and thermodynamic properties.

Multifractality without fine-tuning in a Floquet quasiperiodic chain

Periodically driven, or Floquet, disordered quantum systems have generated many unexpected discoveries of late, such as the anomalous Floquet Anderson insulator and the discrete time crystal. Here, we report the emergence of an entire band of multifractal wavefunctions in a periodically driven chain of non-interacting particles subject to spatially quasiperiodic disorder. Remarkably, this multifractality is robust in that it does not require any fine-tuning of the model parameters, which sets it apart from the known multifractality of critical wavefunctions. The multifractality arises as the periodic drive hybridises the localised and delocalised sectors of the undriven spectrum. We account for this phenomenon in a simple random matrix based theory. Finally, we discuss dynamical signatures of the multifractal states, which should betray their presence in cold atom experiments. Such a simple yet robust realisation of multifractality could advance this so far elusive phenomenon towards applications, such as the proposed disorder-induced enhancement of a superfluid transition.

Light propagation in quasiperiodic dielectric multilayers separated by graphene

The study of photonic crystals, artificial materials whose dielectric properties can be tailored according to the stacking of its constituents, remains an attractive research area. In this article we have employed a transfer matrix treatment to study the propagation of light waves in Fibonacci quasiperiodic dieletric multilayers with graphene embedded. We calculated their dispersion and transmission spectra in order to investigate the effects of the graphene monolayers and quasiperiodic disorder on the system physical behavior. The quasiperiodic dieletric multilayer is composed of two building blocks, silicon dioxide (building block A = SiO2) and titanium dioxide (building block B = TiO2). Our numerical results show that the presence of graphene monolayers reduces the transmissivity on the whole range of frequency and induces a transmission gap in the low frequency region. Regarding the polarization of the light wave, we found that the transmission coefficient is higher for the transverse magnetic (TM) case than for the transverse electric (TE) one. We also conclude from our numerical results that the graphene induced photonic bandgaps (GIPBGs) do not depend on the polarization (TE or TM) of the light wave nor on the Fibonacci generation index n. Moreover, the GIPBGs are omnidirectional photonic band gaps, therefore light cannot propagate in this structures for frequencies lower than a certain value, whatever the incidence angle. Finally, a plot of the transmission spectra versus chemical potential shows that one can, in principle, adjust the width of the photonic band gap by tuning the chemical potential via a gate voltage.

Bandgap oscillation in quasiperiodic (BN)xCy nanotubes

Abstract In the present contribution, we apply first-principles calculations to study the effects of quasiperiodic disorder on the physical properties of BN and C nanotubes. We take BN nanotubes (BNNTs) and C nanotubes (CNTs) as building blocks and construct quasiperiodic BN x C y nanotubes according to the Fibonacci sequence. We studied armchair and zigzag nanotubes of varying diameters. Our results demonstrate that the energy gap oscillates as a function of the n -generation index of the Fibonacci sequence. Moreover, we show that the choice of the BNNTs and CNTs may lead to a quasiperiodic BN x C y nanotube presenting an adjustable energy gap. We obtained a variety of quasiperiodic nanotubes with energy gaps ranging from 0.29 eV to 1.06 eV, which may be of interest for specific technological applications. Finally, it is also demonstrated that the specific heat of the quasiperiodic zigzag and armchair nanotubes presents an oscillatory behavior in the low temperature regime, and that this behavior depends on the curvature of the nanotube.

Bandgap oscillation in quasiperiodic carbon-BN nanoribbons

In this work we address the effects of quasiperiodic disorder on the physical properties of nanoribbons, composed by BN and C, constructed according to the Fibonacci quasiperiodic sequence. We assume BN and C as the building blocks of the resulting quasiperiodic structure. The density of states and energy band gap were obtained through ab-initio calculations based on the density functional theory. We report the effects of the quasiperiodic disorder on the oscillatory behavior of the specific heat, in the low temperature regime, and on the behavior of the energy band gap. In particular, we show that the electronic energy band gap oscillates as a function of the Fibonacci generation index n. Our results suggest that the choice of the building block materials of the quasiperiodic sequence, with appropriate band gap energies, may lead to a tuneable band gap of quasiperiodic nanoribbons.

Localization of a non interacting quantum wave packet in one-dimensional disordered potentials

We show that the tails of the asymptotic density distribution of a quantum wave packet that localizes in the the presence of random or quasiperiodic disorder can be described by the diagonal term of the projection over the eingenstates of the disordered potential. This is equivalent of assuming a phase randomization of the off-diagonal/interference terms. We demonstrate these results through numerical calculations of the dynamics of ultracold atoms in the one-dimensional speckle and quasiperiodic potentials used in the recent experiments that lead to the observation of Anderson localization for matter waves [Billy et al., Nature 453, 891 (2008); Roati et al., Nature 453, 895 (2008)]. For the quasiperiodic case, we also discuss the implications of using continuos or discrete models.

Noise correlation scalings: Revisiting the quantum phase transition in incommensurate lattices with hard-core bosons

Finite size scalings of the momentum distribution and noise correlations are performed to study Mott insulator, Bose glass, and superfluid quantum phases in hard-core bosons (HCBs) subjected to quasiperiodic disorder. The exponents of the correlation functions at the superfluid to Bose-glass (SF-BG) transition are found to be approximately one half of the ones that characterize the superfluid phase. The derivatives of the peak intensities of the correlation functions with respect to quasiperiodic disorder are shown to diverge at the SF-BG critical point. This behavior does not occur in the corresponding free fermion system, which also exhibits an Anderson-like transition at the same critical point and thus provides a unique experimental tool to locate the phase transition in interacting bosonic systems. We also report on the absence of primary sublattice peaks in the momentum distribution of the superfluid phase for special fillings.

Correlated bosons in a one-dimensional optical lattice: Effects of the trapping potential and of quasiperiodic disorder

We investigate the effect of the trapping potential on the quantum phases of strongly correlated ultracold bosons in one-dimensional periodic and quasiperiodic optical lattices. By means of a decoupling meanfield approach, we characterize the ground state of the system and its behavior under variation of the harmonic trapping, as a function of the total number of atoms. For a small atom number the system shows an incompressible Mott-insulating phase, as the size of the cloud remains unaffected when the trapping potential is varied. When the quasiperiodic potential is added the system develops a metastable-disordered phase which is neither compressible nor Mott insulating. This state is characteristic of quasidisorder in the presence of a strong trapping potential.