We theoretically demonstrate that non-Abelian braiding operation can be realized through the scattering between chiral Dirac edge modes (CDEMs) in quantum anomalous Hall insulators by analytically deriving its S-matrix. Based on the analytical model, we propose a viable device for the experimental realization and detection of the non-Abelian braiding operations. Through investigating the tunneling conductance in a discretized lattice model, the non-Abelian properties of CDEMs could also be verified in a numerical way. Our proposal for the CDEM-based braiding provides a new avenue for realizing topologically protected quantum gates.
We numerically demonstrate that the topological corner states residing in the corners of higher-order topological insulator possess non-Abelian braiding properties. Such topological corner states are Dirac fermionic modes other than Majorana zero-modes. We claim that Dirac fermionic modes protected by nontrivial topology also support non-Abelian braiding. An analytical description on such non-Abelian braiding is conducted based on the vortex-induced Dirac-type fermionic modes. The braiding operator for Dirac fermionic modes is also analytically derivated and compared with the Majorana zero-mod…
We study the properties of an ultracold Fermi gas loaded in an optical square lattice and subjected to an external and classical non-Abelian gauge field. We show that this system can be exploited as an optical analogue of relativistic quantum electrodynamics, offering a remarkable route to access the exotic properties of massless Dirac fermions with cold atoms experiments. In particular we show that the underlying Minkowski space-time can also be modified, reaching anisotropic regimes where a remarkable anomalous quantum Hall effect and a squeezed Landau vacuum could be observed.
The notion of chiral symmetry for the conventional Dirac cone is generalized to include the tilted Dirac cones, where the generalized chiral operator turns out to be non-hermitian. It is shown that the generalized chiral symmetry generically protects the zero modes (n=0 Landau level) of the Dirac cone even when tilted. The present generalized symmetry is equivalent to the condition that the Dirac Hamiltonian is elliptic as a differential operator, which provides an explicit relevance to the index theorem.
We study the current of chiral charge density in a Dirac semimetal with two Dirac points in momentum space, subjected to an externally applied time dependent electric field and in the presence of a magnetic field. Based on the kinetic equation approach, we find contributions to the chiral charge current, that are proportional to the second power of the electric field and to the first and second powers of the magnetic field, describing the interplay of the chiral anomaly and the drift motion of electrons moving under the action of electric and magnetic fields.
We find that a repulsive potential of graphene in the presence of a magnetic field has bound states that are peaked inside the barrier with tails extending over \ell(N + 1), where \ell and N are the magnetic length and Landau level(LL) index. We have investigated how these bound states affect scaling properties of the induced density of filled Landau levels of massless Dirac fermions. For chiral fermions we find, in strong coupling regime, that the density inside the repulsive potential can be greater than the value in the absence of the potential while in the weak coupling regime we find nega…
In this paper we study how dynamical chiral symmetry breaking is affected by nonzero chiral chemical potential in Dirac semimetals. To perform this study we applied lattice quantum Monte Carlo simulations of Dirac semimetals. Within lattice simulation we calculated the chiral condensate for various fermion masses, the chiral chemical potentials and effective coupling constants. For all parameters under consideration we have found that the chiral condensate is enhanced by chiral chemical potential. Thus our results confirms that in Dirac semimetals the chiral chemical potential plays a role of …
The non-Abelian braiding of Majorana fermions is one of the most promising operations providing a key building block for the realization of topological quantum computation. Recently, the chiral Majorana fermions were observed in a hybrid junction btween a quantum anomalous Hall insulator and an s-wave superconductor. Here we show that if a quantum dot or Majorana zero mode couples to the chiral Majorana fermions, the resulting resonant exchange of chiral Majorana fermions can lead to the non-Abelian braiding. Remarkably, any operation in the braid group can be achieved by this scheme. We furth…
While it has been well-known that the chirality is an important symmetry for Dirac-fermion systems that gives rise to the zero-mode Landau level in graphene, here we explore whether this notion can be extended to tilted Dirac cones as encountered in organic metals. We have found that there exists a "generalized chiral symmetry" that encompasses the tilted Dirac cones, where a generalized chiral operator $γ$, satisfying $γ^{\dagger} H + Hγ=0$ for the Hamiltonian $H$, protects the zero mode. We can use this to show that the $n=0$ Landau level is delta-function-like (with no broadening) by extend…
We demonstrate that topological Dirac semimetals, which possess two Dirac nodes, separated in momentum space along a rotation axis and protected by rotational symmetry, exhibit an additional quantum anomaly, distinct from the chiral anomaly. This anomaly, which we call the $ \mathbb Z_2$ anomaly, is a consequence of the fact that the Dirac nodes in topological Dirac semimetals carry a $\mathbb Z_2$ topological charge. The $\mathbb Z_2$ anomaly refers to nonconservation of this charge in the presence of external fields due to quantum effects and has observable consequences due to its interplay …
We propose an effective Lagrangian for the low energy theory of the Pfaffian states of the fractional quantum Hall effect in the bulk in terms of non-Abelian Chern-Simons (CS) actions. Our approach exploits the connection between the topological Chern-Simons theory and chiral conformal field theories. This construction can be used to describe a large class of non-Abelian FQH states.
We study the existence and stability of Dirac nodal lines in three-dimensional layered systems, whose layers individually have Dirac nodal points protected by chiral (sublattice) symmetry. The model system we consider is the rhombohedral stack of graphene layers with each layer subjected to a uniform external potential that respects either AIII or BDI classes. From the Hamiltonians in either classes, a pair of nontrivial spiraling Dirac nodal lines can be derived. The results are reasonable in accord to the topological classification of gapless phases for codimension $2$. The nodal lines appro…
Powered by effective parquet nesting a commensurate chiral honeycomb superstructure in a trigonally packed transition metal dichalcogenide TaSe$_2$ results in a Dirac cone anomaly in one-particle excitation spectrum. However, the formation of the well defined Dirac point seems to be hindered by effective scattering on 2D plasmons.
We study the electromagnetic response and surface electromagnetic modes in a generic gapped Dirac material under pumping with circularly polarized light. The valley imbalance due to pumping leads to a net Berry curvature, giving rise to a finite transverse conductivity. We discuss the appearance of nonreciprocal chiral edge modes, their hybridization and waveguiding in a nanoribbon geometry, and giant polarization rotation in nanoribbon arrays.
The motion of electron wave packets in the Dirac semimetals A$_3$Bi (A=Na,K,Rb) is studied in a semiclassical approximation. Because of the two-fold degeneracy of the Dirac points and a momentum-dependent gap term in the low-energy Hamiltonian, the associated Berry curvature is non-Abelian. In the presence of background electromagnetic fields, such a Berry curvature leads to a splitting of trajectories for the wave packets that originate from different Dirac points and chiral sectors. The nature of the splitting strongly depends on the background fields as well as the initial chiral compositio…
Dirac metals are characterized by the linear dispersion of fermionic quasi-particles, with the Dirac point hidden inside a Fermi surface. We study the magnetotransport in these materials using chiral kinetic theory to describe within the same framework both the negative magnetoresistance caused by chiral magnetic effect and quantum oscillations in the magnetoresistance due to the existence of the Fermi surface. We discuss the relevance of obtained results to recent measurements on ${\rm Cd_3As_2}$.
The dislocation in Dirac semimetal carries an emergent magnetic flux parallel to the dislocation axis. We show that due to the emergent magnetic field the dislocation accommodates a single fermion massless mode of the corresponding low-energy one-particle Hamiltonian. The mode is propagating along the dislocation with its spin directed parallel to the dislocation axis. In agreement with the chiral anomaly observed in Dirac semimetals, an external electric field results in the spectral flow of the one-particle Hamiltonian, in pumping of the fermionic quasiparticles out from the vacuum, and in c…
Motivated by the geometric character of spin Hall conductance, the topological invariants of generic superconductivity are discussed based on the Bogoliuvov-de Gennes equation on lattices. They are given by the Chern numbers of degenerate condensate bands for unitary order, which are realizations of Abelian chiral anomalies for non-Abelian connections. The three types of Chern numbers for the $x,y$ and $z$-directions are given by covering degrees of some doubled surfaces around the Dirac monopoles. For nonunitary states, several topological invariants are defined by analyzing the so-called $q$…
We establish the existence of a chiral spin liquid (CSL) as the exact ground state of the Kitaev model on a decorated honeycomb lattice, which is obtained by replacing each site in the familiar honeycomb lattice with a triangle. The CSL state spontaneously breaks time reversal symmetry but preserves other symmetries. There are two topologically distinct CSLs separated by a quantum critical point. Interestingly, vortex excitations in the topologically nontrivial (Chern number $\pm 1$) CSL obey non-Abelian statistics.
This talk presents a study of massless relativistic Dirac fields in three Euclidean dimensions, at finite temperature and density, in the presence of a uniform electromagnetic background. Apart from explaining the behavior of Hall's conductivity for graphene, our results show a direct relationship between the selection of a phase for the Dirac determinant and the generation (or lack thereof) of Berry's phases and Chern-Simons terms.
A connection is established between the continuum limit of the low-energy tight-binding description of graphene immersed in an in-plane magnetic field and the Chiral Magnetic Effect in Quantum Chromodynamics. A combination of mass gaps that explicitly breaks the equivalence of the Dirac cones, favoring an imbalance of pseudo-chiralities, is the essential ingredient to generate a non-dissipative electric current along the external field. Currents, number densities and condensates generated from this setup are investigated for different hierarchies of the energy scales involved.
Circularly polarized light (CPL) can induce an asymmetry between the number of left- and right-handed chiral quasiparticles in Dirac and Weyl semimetals. We show that if the photoresponse of the material is dominated by chiral quasiparticles, the total chiral charge induced in the material by CPL can be evaluated in a model-independent way through the chiral anomaly. In the presence of an external magnetic field perpendicular to the incident CPL, this allows to predict the linear density of the induced photocurrent resulting from the chiral magnetic effect. The predicted effect should exist in…
Massive Dirac fermions break the chiral symmetry explicitly and also make the Berry curvature of the band structure non-Abelian. By utilizing the Green's function technique, we develop a microscopic theory to establish a set of quantum diffusive equations for massive Dirac materials in the presence of electric and magnetic fields. It is found that the longitudinal magnetoresistance is always negative and quadratic in the magnetic field, and decays quickly with the mass. The theory is applicable to the systems with non-Abelian Berry curvature and resolves the puzzles of anomalous magnetotranspo…
There are two types of edge states in graphene with/without magnetic field. One is a quantum Hall edge state, which is topologically protected against small perturbation. The other is a chiral zero mode that is localized near the boundary with/without magnetic field. The latter is also topological but is guaranteed to be zero energy by the chiral symmetry, which is also responsible for massless Dirac like dispersion. Conceptual roles of the edge states are stressed and reviewed from a view point of the bulk-edge correspondence and the topological order.
We review a recent development in the theoretical understanding of the nu=5/2 quantum Hall plateau and propose a new conformal field theory, slightly different from the Moore-Read one, to describe another universality class relevant for this plateau. The ground state is still given by the Pfaffian and is completely polarized, however, the elementary quasiholes are charge 1/2 anyons with abelian statistics theta=pi/2, which obey complete spin-charge separation. The physical hole is represented by two such quasiholes plus a free neutral Majorana fermion. We also compute the periods and amplitude…
The field of topological materials science has recently been focussing on three-dimensional Dirac semimetals, which exhibit robust Dirac phases in the bulk. However, the absence of characteristic surface states in accidental Dirac semimetals (DSM) makes it difficult to experimentally verify claims about the topological nature using commonly used surface-sensitive techniques. The chiral magnetic effect (CME), which originates from the Weyl nodes, causes an $\textbf{E}\cdot\textbf{B}$-dependent chiral charge polarization, which manifests itself as negative magnetoresistance. We exploit the exten…
We present a two-dimensional lattice model for quantum spin-1/2 for which the low-energy limit is governed by four flavors of strongly interacting Majorana fermions. We study this low-energy effective theory using two alternative approaches. The first consists of a mean-field approximation. The second consists of a Random Phase approximation (RPA) for the single-particle Green's functions of the Majorana fermions built from their exact forms in a certain one-dimensional limit. The resulting phase diagram consists of two competing chiral phases, one with Abelian and the other with non-Abelian t…
There is evidence for existence of massless Dirac quasi-particles in graphene, which satisfy Dirac equation in (1+2) dimensions near the so called Dirac points which lie at the corners at the graphene's brilluoin zone. It is shown that parity operator in (1+2) dimensions play an interesting role and can be used for defining conserved chiral currents [there is no gamma^5 in (1+2) dimensions]. It is shown that the "anomalous" current induced by an external gauge field can be related to the anomalous divergence of an axial vector current which arises due to quantum radiative corrections provided …
Tricriticality, as a sister of criticality, is a fundamental and absorbing issue in condensed matter physics. It has been verified that the bosonic Wilson-Fisher universality class can be changed by gapless fermionic modes at criticality. However, the counterpart phenomena at tricriticality have rarely been explored. In this paper, we study a model in which a tricritical Ising model is coupled to massless Dirac fermions. We find that the massless Dirac fermions result in the emergence of a new tricritical point, which we refer to as the chiral tricritical point (CTP), at the phase boundary bet…
In planar tilted Dirac cone systems, the tilt parameter can be made space-dependent by either a perpendicular displacement field, or by chemical substitution in certain systems. We show that the symmetric partial derivative of the tilt parameter generates non-Abelian synthetic gauge fields in these systems. The small velocity limit of these gauge forces corresponds to Rashba and Dresselhaus spin-orbit couplings. At the classical level, the same symmetric spatial derivatives of tilt contribute to conservative, Lorentz-type and friction-like forces. The velocity dependent forces are odd with res…
We consider the hydrodynamical model of topological Dirac semi-metal possessing two Dirac nodes separated in momentum space along a rotation axis. It has been argued that the system in question, except the chiral anomaly, is endowed with the other one $\mathbb{Z}_2$. In order to model such a system we introduce two $U(1)$-gauge fields. The presence of the additional $\mathbb{Z}_2$ anomaly leads to the non-trivial modifications of hydrodynamical equations and to the appearance of new kinetic coefficients bounded with the vorticity and the magnetic parts of Maxwell and auxiliary $U(1)$-gauge fie…
We study the production of chiral fermions in a background of a strong non-abelian gauge field with a non-vanishing Chern-Pontryagin density. We discuss both pair production analogous to the Schwinger effect as well as asymmetric production through the chiral anomaly, sourced by the Chern-Pontryagin density. In abelian gauge theories one may nicely understand these processes by considering that the fermion dispersion relation forms discrete Landau levels. Here we extend this analysis to a non-abelian gauge theory, considering an intrinsically non-abelian isotropic and homogeneous SU(2) gauge f…
