Transport studies of a bent quantum Hall junction at integer filling factors show strongly insulating states at higher fields. In this paper we analyze the strongly insulating behavior as a function of temperature T and dc bias V, in order to classify the localization mechanisms responsible for the insulating state. The temperature dependence suggests a crossover from activated nearest-neighbor hopping at higher T to variable-range hopping conduction at lower T. The base temperature electric field dependence is consistent with 1D variable-range hopping conduction. We observe almost identical behavior at filling factors 1 and 2, and discuss how the bent quantum Hall junction conductance appears to be independent of the bulk spin state. Various models of 1D variable-range hopping which either include or ignore interactions are compared, all of which are consistent with the basic model of disorder coupled counter-propagating quantum Hall edges.
A non-planar geometry for the quantum Hall (QH) effect is studied, whereby two quantum Hall (QH) systems are joined at a sharp right angle. When both facets are at equal filling factor nu the junction hosts a channel with non-quantized conductance, dependent on nu. The state is metallic at nu = 1/3, with conductance along the junction increasing as the temperature T drops. At nu = 1, 2 it is strongly insulating, and at nu = 3, 4 shows only weak T dependence. Upon applying a dc voltage bias along the junction, the differential conductance again shows three different behaviors. Hartree calculati…
Metal-Insulator Coexistence and Gap-Crossing Domain-Wall Modes in an Aubry-André Model with Nonlocal Hopping
Peking University（北京大学）；Renmin University of China（中国人民大学）；The Pennsylvania State University（宾夕法尼亚州立大学）；Hefei National Laboratory（合肥国家实验室）；Shanxi University（山西大学）
Electronic transmission in bent quantum wires modeled by the tight binding Hamiltonian, and clamped between ideal, semi-infinite leads is studied. The effect of `bending' the chain is simulated by introducing a non-zero hopping between the extremities of the wire. It is seen that the proximity of the two ends gives rise to Falo line shapes in the transmission spectrum. Transmission properties for both an ordered lattice and a Fibonacci quantum wire are discussed. In the quasi-periodic Fibonacci chain, the proximity of the two ends of the chain closes all the gaps in the spectrum and the spectr…
We study exchange coupling due to the interelectron Coulomb interaction between two ferromagnetic grains embedded into insulating matrix. This contribution to the exchange interaction complements the contribution due to virtual electron hopping between the grains. We show that the Coulomb and the hopping based exchange interactions are comparable. However, for most system parameters these contributions have opposite signs and compete with each other. In contrast to the hopping based exchange interaction the Coulomb based exchange is inversely proportional to the dielectric constant of the insu…
In granular superconductors, individual grains can contain bound Cooper pairs while the system as a whole is strongly insulating. In such cases the conductivity is determined by electron hopping between localized states in individual grains. Here we examine a model of hopping conductivity in such an insulating granular superconductor, where disorder is assumed to be provided by random charges embedded in the insulating gaps between grains. We use computer simulations to calculate the single-electron and electron pair density of states at different values of the superconducting gap $Δ$, and we …
We study a current shot noise in a macroscopic insulator based on a two-dimensional electron system in GaAs in a variable range hopping (VRH) regime. At low temperature and in a sufficiently depleted sample a shot noise close to a full Poissonian value is measured. This suggests an observation of a finite-size effect in shot noise in the VRH conduction and demonstrates a possibility of accurate quasiparticle charge measurements in the insulating regime.
We study topological properties and the topological phase transitions therein for a semi-Dirac Haldane model on a honeycomb lattice in presence of an extended range (third neighbour) hopping. While in the absence of a third neighbour hopping, $t_3$, the system exhibits gapless electronic spectrum, its presence creates an energy gap in the dispersion. However, the nature of the spectral gap, that is, whether it is trivial or topological needs to be ascertained. We find that the answer depends on the value of $t_3$, and its interplay with the value of the onsite potential that breaks the sublatt…
We study interlayer exchange coupling (IEC) based on the many-body Coulomb interaction between conduction electrons in magnetic tunnel junction (MTJ). This mechanism complements the known IEC based on virtual electron hopping (or spin currents). We find that these two mechanisms have different behavior on system parameters. The Coulomb based IEC may exceed the hopping based exchange coupling. We show that the Coulomb based exchange coupling, in contrast to the hopping based coupling, depends strongly on the dielectric constant of the insulating layer. The dependence of the IEC on the dielectri…
We develop a theoretical approach to study the scaling of anomalous Hall effect (AHE) in the insulating regime, which is observed to be $σ_{xy}^{AH}\proptoσ_{xx}^{1.40\sim1.75}$ in experiments over a large range of materials. This scaling is qualitatively different from the ones observed in metals. Basing our theory on the phonon-assisted hopping mechanism and percolation theory, we derive a general formula for the anomalous Hall conductivity, and show that it scales with the longitudinal conductivity as $σ_{xy}^{AH}\simσ_{xx}^γ$ with $γ$ predicted to be $1.38\leqγ\leq1.76$, quantitatively in …
The conductivity of extremely high mobility dilute two-dimensional holes in GaAs changes linearly with temperature in the insulating side of the metal-insulator transition. Hopping conduction, characterized by an exponentially decreasing conductivity with decreasing temperature, is not observed when the conductivity is smaller than $e^{2}/h$. We suggest that strong interactions in a regime close to the Wigner crystallization must be playing a role in the unusual transport.
A variational ground state for insulating bilayer graphene (BLG), subject to quantizing magnetic fields, is proposed. Due to the Zeeman coupling, the layer anti-ferromagnet (LAF) order parameter in fully gapped BLG gets projected onto the spin easy plane, and simultaneously a ferromagnet order, which can further be enhanced by exchange interaction, develops in the direction of the magnetic field. The activation gap for the $ν=0$ Hall state then displays a crossover from quadratic to linear scaling with the magnetic field, as it gets stronger, and I obtain excellent agreement with a number of r…
We consider granular quantum matter defined by Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK) dots coupled via random one-body hopping. Within the framework of Schwarzian field theory, we identify a zero temperature quantum phase transition between an insulating phase at weak and a metallic phase at strong hopping. The critical hopping strength scales inversely with the number of degrees of freedom on the dots. The increase of temperature out of either phase induces a crossover into a regime of strange metallic behavior.
We perform transport measurements in high quality bilayer graphene pnp junctions with suspended top gates. At a magnetic field B=0, we demonstrate band gap opening by an applied perpendicular electric field, with an On/Off ratio up to 20,000 at 260mK. Within the band gap, the conductance decreases exponentially by 3 orders of magnitude with increasing electric field, and can be accounted for by variable range hopping with a gate-tunable density of states, effective mass, and localization length. At large B, we observe quantum Hall conductance with fractional values, which arise from equilibrat…
We study the possibility of transferring fermions from a trivial system as particle source to an empty system but at topological phase as a mold for casting a stable topological insulator dynamically. We show that this can be realized by a non-Hermitian unidirectional hopping, which connects a central system at topological phase and a trivial flat-band system with a periodic driving chemical potential, which scans over the valence band of the central system. The near exceptional-point dynamics allows a unidirectional dynamical process: the time evolution from an initial state with full-filled …
We investigate the insulating phase that forms in a titanium nitride film in a close vicinity of the disorder-driven superconductor-insulator transition. In zero magnetic field the temperature dependence of the resistance reveals a sequence of distinct regimes upon decreasing temperature crossing over from logarithmic to activated behavior with the variable-range hopping squeezing in between. In perpendicular magnetic fields below 2 T, the thermally activated regime retains at intermediate temperatures, whereas at ultralow temperatures, the resistance increases faster than that of the thermall…
Higher-order topological crystalline phases in low-dimensional interacting quantum systems represent a challenging and largely unexplored research topic. Here, we derive a Hamiltonian describing fermions interacting through correlated hopping processes that break chiral invariance, but preserve both inversion and time-reversal symmetries. In this way, we show that our one-dimensional model gives rise to an interacting second-order topological insulating phase that supports gapped edge states. The topological nature of such interacting phase turns out to be revealed by both long-range order of …
We review analytical and numerical studies of correlated insulating states in twisted bilayer graphene, focusing on real-space lattice models constructions and their unbiased quantum many-body solutions. We show that by constructing localized Wannier states for the narrow bands, the projected Coulomb interactions can be approximated by interactions of cluster charges with assisted nearest neighbor hopping terms. With the interaction part only, the Hamiltonian is $SU(4)$ symmetric considering both spin and valley degrees of freedom. In the strong coupling limit where the kinetic terms are negle…
We investigate effects of Coulomb interaction and hopping transport in the insulator phase of granular metals and quantum dot arrays. We consider a spatially periodic as well as an irregular array, including disorder in a form of a random on-site electrostatic potential. We study the Mott transition between the insulating and metallic states in the regular system and find the dependence of the Mott gap upon the intergranular coupling. The conductivity of a strictly periodic array has an activation form with the Mott gap as an activation energy. Considering irregular systems we concentrate on t…
Motivated by the topologically insulating (TI) circuit of capacitors and inductors proposed and tested in arXiv:1309.0878, we present a related circuit with less elements per site. The normal mode frequency matrix of our circuit is unitarily equivalent to the hopping matrix of a quantum spin Hall insulator (QSHI) and we identify perturbations that do not backscatter the circuit's edge modes. The idea behind these models is generalized, providing a platform to simulate tunable and locally accessible lattices with arbitrary complex spin-dependent hopping of any range. A simulation of a non-Abeli…
