Search

We use the Lindblad equation method to investigate the onset of a mobility edge and the topological phase transition in the disordered SSH chain connected to two external baths in the large bias limit. From the scaling properties of the nonequilibrium stationary current flowing across the system, we recover the localization/delocalization in the disordered chain. To probe the topological phase transition in the presence of disorder, we use the even-odd differential occupancy as a mean to discriminate topologically trivial from topologically nontrival phases in the out-of-equilibirum system. Eventually, we argue how to generalize our method to other systems undergoing a topological phase transition in the presence of disorder., Comment: 21 pages, 13 figures

In this work we give a characterization of the RF effect of memory switching on Nb-Al/AlOx-(Nb)-Pd$_{0.99}$Fe$_{0.01}$-Nb Josephson junctions as a function of magnetic field pulse amplitude and duration, alongside with an electrodynamical characterization of such junctions, in comparison with standard Nb-Al/AlOx-Nb tunnel junctions. The use of microwaves to tune the switching parameters of magnetic Josephson junctions is a step in the development of novel addressing schemes aimed at improving the performances of superconducting memories., Comment: IEEE Trans. Appl. Supercond. Special Issue ISEC2017

We study the anomalous Josephson effect in a nanowire with Rashba spin-orbit interaction and Zeeman spin splitting, contacted with two s-wave superconducting leads with either one or two open conducting channels in the wire. In both cases, we find that the Josephson current is zero at a value φ 0 ≠ 0, π of the phase difference between the order parameter of the leads. While in the former case the critical current is direction independent, in the latter case we observe an asymmetry between I c+ (the maximum Josephson current from left to right) and I c - up to about 20%.

Per esplorare fenomeni fisici, oggi è possibile utilizzare schede a microcontrollore programma bili e trasduttori a basso costo. I sistemi possono essere impiegati sia in dimostrazioni interattive, sia in laboratorio con la progettazione di esperimenti basati sull’acquisizione e l’analisi-rappresentazione dati. L’esperienza proposta `e la rivisitazione di un exhibit dell’Exploratorium, che permette di giocare con la conservazione del momento angolare. Si adopera un sistema integrato accelerometro-giroscopio MEMS collegato a un microprocessoree wireless programmato con Python. Abbiamo verificato l’efficacia del sistema in contesti formali e informali con studenti, insegnanti e visitatori di mostre scientifiche coinvolgendoli sul piano percettivo-motorio-emotivo giocando con la multi rappresentazione e l’uso di diversi registri per impadronirsi di concetti anche complessi.

The scattering of Dirac electrons by topological defects could be one of the most relevant sources of resistance in graphene and at the boundary surfaces of a three-dimensional topological insulator (3D TI). In the long wavelength, continuous limit of the Dirac equation, the topological defect can be described as a distortion of the metric in curved space, which can be accounted for by a rotation of the Gamma matrices and by a spin connection inherited with the curvature. These features modify the scattering properties of the carriers. We discuss the self-energy of defect formation with this approach and the electron cross-section for intra-valley scattering at an edge dislocation in graphene, including corrections coming from the local stress. The cross-section contribution to the resistivity, ρ, is derived within the Boltzmann theory of transport. On the same lines, we discuss the scattering of a screw dislocation in a two-band 3D TI, like Bi1-xSbx, and we present the analytical simplified form of the wavefunction for gapless helical states bound at the defect. When a 3D TI is sandwiched between two even-parity superconductors, Dirac boundary states acquire superconductive correlations by proximity. In the presence of a magnetic vortex piercing the heterostructure, two Majorana states are localized at the two interfaces and bound to the vortex core. They have a half integer total angular momentum each, to match with the unitary orbital angular momentum of the vortex charge., This work was done with financial support from FP7/2007-2013 under the grant no. 264098—MAMA (Multifunctional Advanced Materials and Nanoscale Phenomena), MIUR (Ministero dell’ Istruzione, dell’ Università e della Ricerca)-Italy through the Prin-Project 2009 “Nanowire high critical temperature superconductor field-effect devices” and Futuro In Ricerca (FIRB)/2013-2015. Vincenzo Parente and Francisco Guinea acknowledge financial support from MINECO (Ministerio Economía y Competitividad), Spain, through grant FIS2011-23713, and the European Union, through grant 290846.

We show that a junction of three off-critical quantum Ising chains can be regarded as a quantum spin chain realization of the two-channel spin-1/2 overscreened Kondo effect with two superconducting leads. We prove that, as long as the Kondo temperature is larger than the superconducting gap, the equivalent Kondo model flows towards the 2 channel Kondo fixed point. We argue that our system provides the first controlled realization of 2 channel Kondo effect with superconducting leads. This, besides its the theoretical interest, is of importance for potential applications to a number of context, including the analysis of the quantum entanglement properties of a Kondo system., 14 pages, 4 .eps figures

We study a Hanbury Brown and Twiss (HBT) interferometer formed with chiral edge channels of a quantum Hall system. HBT cross-correlations are calculated for a device operating both in the integer and fractional quantum Hall regimes, the latter at Laughlin filling fractions. We find that in both cases, when the current is dominated by electron tunneling, current-current correlations show antibunching, characteristic of fermionic correlations. When the current-current correlations are dominated by quasiparticle tunneling, the correlations reveal bunching, characteristic of bosons. For electron tunneling we use Keldysh technique, and show that the result for fractional filling factors can be obtained in a simple way from the results of the integer case. It is shown that quasiparticle-dominated cross-current correlations can be analyzed by means of a quantum master equation approach. We present here a detailed derivation of the results of Ref. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 109, 106802 (2012)] and generalize them to all Laughlin fractions., Comment: 33 pages, 12 figures, Selected as Editor's suggestion

We present a study of a Hanbury Brown-Twiss interferometer realized with anyons. Such a device can directly probe entanglement and fractional statistics of initially uncorrelated particles. We calculate Hanbury Brown-Twiss cross correlations of Abelian Laughlin anyons. The correlations we calculate exhibit partial bunching similar to bosons, indicating a substantial statistical transmutation from the underlying electronic degrees of freedom. We also find qualitative differences between the anyonic signal and the corresponding bosonic or fermionic signals, indicating that anyons cannot be simply thought of as intermediate between bosons and fermions.

We study the entanglement dynamics and relaxation properties of a system of two interacting qubits in the cases of (I) two independent bosonic baths and (II) one common bath. We find that in the case (II) the existence of a decoherence-free subspace (DFS) makes entanglement dynamics very rich. We show that when the system is initially in a state with a component in the DFS the relaxation time is surprisingly long, showing the existence of semi-decoherence free subspaces. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

A superconductor-semiconducting nanowire-superconductor heterostructure in the presence of spin orbit coupling and magnetic field can support a supercurrent even in the absence of phase difference between the superconducting electrodes. We investigate this phenomenon, the anomalous Josephson effect, employing a model capable of describing many bands in the normal region. We discuss geometrical and symmetry conditions required to have finite anomalous supercurrent and in particular we show that this phenomenon is enhanced when the Fermi level is located close to a band opening in the normal region., Comment: 7+epsilon pages, 6 figures, Revised version

We develop a finite-element technique that allows one to evaluate correction of the order of GQ to various transport characteristics of arbitrary nanostructures. Common examples of such corrections are the weak-localization effect on conductance and universal conductance fluctuations. Our approach, however, is not restricted to conductance only. It allows one in the same manner to evaluate corrections to the noise characteristics, superconducting properties, strongly nonequilibrium transport, and transmission distribution. To enable such functionality, we consider Green’s functions of arbitrary matrix structure. We derive a finite-element technique from Cooperon and diffuson ladders for these Green’s functions. The derivation is supplemented with application examples. Those include transitions between ensembles and the Aharonov-Bohm effect.

The transport properties of a quantum point contact in presence of nearby impurities within the semiclassical approach is studied here. We find the distribution function of transmission eigenvalues is function only of the average reflection eigenvalue and of the number of open transport channels is shown.

We discuss the Full Counting Statistics of non-commuting variables with the measurement of successive spin counts in non-collinear directions taken as an example. We show that owing to an irreducible detector back-action, the FCS in this case may be sensitive to the dynamics of the detectors, and may differ from the predictions obtained with using a naive version of the Projection Postulate. We present here a general model of detector dynamics and path-integral approach to the evaluation of FCS. We concentrate further on a simple "diffusive" model of the detector dynamics where the FCS can be evaluated with transfer-matrix method. The resulting probability distribution of spin counts is characterized by anomalously large higher cumulants and substantially deviates from Gaussian Statistics., Comment: 11 pages, 3 figures

We study the distribution of transmission eigenvalues of a quantum point contact with nearby impurities. In the semi-classical case (the chemical potential lies at the conductance plateau) we find that the transmission properties of this system are obtained from the ensemble of Gaussian random reflection matrices. The distribution only depends on the number of open transport channels and the average reflection eigenvalue and crosses over from the Poissonian for one open channel to the form predicted by the circuit theory in the limit of large number of open channels., 8 pages, 3 figures

We apply a Gutzwiller-like variational technique to study Josephson conduction across a quantum dot with an odd number of electrons connected to two superconducting leads. Our method projects out all states on the dot but the Kondo singlet and is valid when Kondo correlations are dominant and no Andreev bound states localized at the dot are available for Kondo screening. In these conditions superconducting pairing is a competing effect and the junction is π-like, to optimize antiferromagnetic correlations on the dot. As the superconducting gap increases, the Josephson current also increases, but its phase dependence becomes strongly non-sinusoidal.