Domain wall competition in the Chern insulating regime of twisted bilayer graphene
Physical Review B: Condensed Matter and Materials Physics American Physical Society 104 (2021) 115404
Abstract:
We consider magic-angle twisted bilayer graphene (TBG) at filling $\nu=+3$, where experiments have observed a robust quantized anomalous Hall effect. This has been attributed to the formation of a valley- and spin-polarized Chern insulating ground state that spontaneously breaks time-reversal symmetry, and is stabilized by a hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) substrate. We identify three different types of domain wall, and study their properties and energetic selection mechanisms via theoretical arguments and Hartree-Fock calculations adapted to deal with inhomogeneous moir\'e systems. We comment on the implications of these results for transport and scanning probe experiments.Exciton band topology in spontaneous quantum anomalous Hall insulators: applications to twisted bilayer graphene
Physical Review Letters American Physical Society 126:13 (2021) 137601
Abstract:
We uncover topological features of neutral particle-hole pair excitations of correlated quantum anomalous Hall (QAH) insulators whose approximately flat conduction and valence bands have equal and opposite nonzero Chern number. Using an exactly solvable model we show that the underlying band topology affects both the center-of-mass and relative motion of particle-hole bound states. This leads to the formation of topological exciton bands whose features are robust to nonuniformity of both the dispersion and the Berry curvature. We apply these ideas to recently reported broken-symmetry spontaneous QAH insulators in substrate aligned magic-angle twisted bilayer graphene.Distinguishing localization from chaos: challenges in finite-size systems
Annals of Physics Elsevier 427:April 2021 (2021) 168415
Abstract:
We re-examine attempts to study the many-body localization transition using measures that are physically natural on the ergodic/quantum chaotic regime of the phase diagram. Using simple scaling arguments and an analysis of various models for which rigorous results are available, we find that these measures can be particularly adversely affected by the strong finite-size effects observed in nearly all numerical studies of many-body localization. This severely impacts their utility in probing the transition and the localized phase. In light of this analysis, we discuss a recent study (Šuntajs et al., 2020) of the behaviour of the Thouless energy and level repulsion in disordered spin chains, and its implications for the question of whether MBL is a true phase of matter.Glide symmetry breaking and Ising criticality in the quasi-1D magnet CoNb2O6
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences National Academy of Sciences 117:41 (2020) 25219-25224
Abstract:
We construct a microscopic spin-exchange Hamiltonian for the quasi–one-dimensional (1D) Ising magnet CoNb2O6 that captures detailed and hitherto-unexplained aspects of its dynamic spin structure factor. We perform a symmetry analysis that recalls that an individual Ising chain in this material is buckled, with two sites in each unit cell related by a glide symmetry. Combining this with numerical simulations benchmarked against neutron scattering experiments, we argue that the single-chain Hamiltonian contains a staggered spin-exchange term. We further argue that the transverse-field–tuned quantum critical point in CoNb2O6 corresponds to breaking this glide symmetry, rather than an on-site Ising symmetry as previously believed. This gives a unified microscopic explanation of the dispersion of confined states in the ordered phase and quasiparticle breakdown in the polarized phase at high transverse field.Spin crossovers and superdiffusion in the one-dimensional Hubbard model
Physical Review B American Physical Society 102:11 (2020) 115121