1,721,013 research outputs found
Chiral anomaly in real space from stable fractional charges at the edge of a quantum spin Hall insulator
No full textThe chiral anomaly is based on a nonconserved chiral charge and can happen in Dirac fermion systems under the influence of external electromagnetic fields. In this case, the spectral flow leads to a transfer of right- to left-moving excitations or vice versa. The corresponding transfer of chiral particles happens in momentum space. Here we describe an intriguing way to introduce the chiral anomaly into real space. Our system consists of two quantum dots that are formed at the helical edges of a quantum spin Hall insulator by means of magnetic barriers. Such a setup gives rise to fractional charges which we show to be sharp quantum numbers for large barrier strengths. Interestingly, it is possible to map the system onto a quantum spin Hall ring in the presence of a flux pierced through the ring, where the relative angle between the magnetization directions takes the role of the flux. The chiral anomaly in this system is then directly related to the excess occupation of particles in the two quantum dots. This analogy allows us to predict an observable consequence of the chiral anomaly in real space, which is connected to the presence of fractional charges in the very same system
Z4 parafermions in Weakly Interacting Superconducting Constrictions at the Helical Edge of Quantum Spin Hall Insulators
No full textParafermions are generalizations of Majorana fermions that may appear in interacting topological systems. They are known to be powerful building blocks of topological quantum computers. Existing proposals for realizations of parafermions typically rely on strong electronic correlations which are hard to achieve in the laboratory. We identify a novel physical system in which parafermions generically develop. It is based on a quantum constriction formed by the helical edge states of a quantum spin Hall insulator in the vicinity of an ordinary s-wave superconductor. Interestingly, our analysis suggests that Z4 parafermions are emerging bound states in this setup in the weakly interacting regime. Furthermore, we identify a situation in which Majorana fermions and parafermions can coexist
Fractional Wigner Crystal in the Helical Luttinger Liquid
No full textThe properties of the strongly interacting edge states of two dimensional topological insulators in the presence of two-particle backscattering are investigated. We find an anomalous behavior of the density-density correlation functions, which show oscillations that are neither of Friedel nor of Wigner type: they, instead, represent a Wigner crystal of fermions of fractional charge e/2, with e the electron charge. By studying the Fermi operator, we demonstrate that the state characterized by such fractional oscillations still bears the signatures of spin-momentum locking. Finally, we compare the spin-spin correlation functions and the density-density correlation functions to argue that the fractional Wigner crystal is characterized by a nontrivial spin texture
Phonon-Induced Backscattering in Helical Edge States
No full textA single pair of helical edge states as realized at the boundary of a quantum spin Hall insulator is known to be robust against elastic single particle backscattering as long as time reversal symmetry is preserved. However, there is no symmetry preventing inelastic backscattering as brought about by phonons in the presence of Rashba spin orbit coupling. In this Letter, we show that the quantized conductivity of a single channel of helical Dirac electrons is protected even against this inelastic mechanism to leading order. We further demonstrate that this result remains valid when Coulomb interaction is included in the framework of a helical Tomonaga Luttinger liqui
Oscillatory nonlinear conductance of an interacting quantum wirewith an impurity
Full text linkThe nonlinear conductance of a one-dimensional quantum wire adiabatically coupled to Fermi liquid electron reservoirs is determined in the presence of an impurity. We show that electron-electron interaction in connection with the finite length of the wire leads to characteristic oscillations in the current as a function of the applied voltage
Appearance of fractional charge in the noise of nonchiral Luttinger liquids
Full text linkThe current noise of a voltage biased interacting quantum wire adiabatically connected to metallic leads is computed in the presence of an impurity in the wire. We find that in the weak backscattering limit the Fano factor characterizing the ratio between noise and backscattered current crucially depends on the noise frequency ω relative to the ballistic frequency vF/gL, where vF is the Fermi velocity, g is the Luttinger liquid interaction parameter, and L is the length of the wire. In contrast to chiral Luttinger liquids the noise is not only due to the Poissonian backscattering of fractionally charged quasiparticles at the impurity, but it also depends on Andreev-type reflections at the contacts, so that the frequency dependence of the noise needs to be analyzed to extract the fractional charge e*=eg of the bulk excitations
Transport properties of an interacting quantum wire with an impurity : Effects of the finite length
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