Reflectionless Klein tunneling of Dirac fermions: comparison of split-operator and staggered-lattice discretization of the Dirac equation.

Massless Dirac fermions in an electric field propagate along the field lines without backscattering, due to the combination of spin-momentum locking and spin conservation. This phenomenon, known as 'Klein tunneling', may be lost if the Dirac equation is discretized in space and time, because of scattering between multiple Dirac cones in the Brillouin zone. To avoid this, a staggered space-time lattice discretization has been developed in the literature, withonesingle Dirac cone in the Brillouin zone of the original square lattice. Here we show that the staggering doubles the size of the Brillouin zone, which actually containstwoDirac cones. We find that this fermion doubling causes a spurious breakdown of Klein tunneling, which can be avoided by an alternative single-cone discretization scheme based on a split-operator approach.

Metallic phase of the quantum Hall effect in four-dimensional space.

We study the phase diagram of the quantum Hall effect in four-dimensional (4D) space. Unlike in 2D, in 4D there exists a metallic as well as an insulating phase, depending on the disorder strength. The critical exponent ν≈1.2 of the diverging localization length at the quantum Hall insulator-to-metal transition differs from the semiclassical value ν=1 of 4D Anderson transitions in the presence of time-reversal symmetry. Our numerical analysis is based on a mapping of the 4D Hamiltonian onto a 1D dynamical system, providing a route towards the experimental realization of the 4D quantum Hall effect.

Majorana bound states without vortices in topological superconductors with electrostatic defects.

Vortices in two-dimensional superconductors with broken time-reversal and spin-rotation symmetry can bind states at zero excitation energy. These so-called Majorana bound states transform a thermal insulator into a thermal metal and may be used to encode topologically protected qubits. We identify an alternative mechanism for the formation of Majorana bound states, akin to the way in which Shockley states are formed on metal surfaces: An electrostatic line defect can have a pair of Majorana bound states at the end points. The Shockley mechanism explains the appearance of a thermal metal in vortex-free lattice models of chiral p-wave superconductors and (unlike the vortex mechanism) is also operative in the topologically trivial phase.

Quantum Goos-Hänchen effect in graphene.

The Goos-Hänchen (GH) effect is an interference effect on total internal reflection at an interface, resulting in a shift sigma of the reflected beam along the interface. We show that the GH effect at a p-n interface in graphene depends on the pseudospin (sublattice) degree of freedom of the massless Dirac fermions, and find a sign change of sigma at angle of incidence alpha=arcsin sqrt[sinalpha{c}] determined by the critical angle alpha{c} for total reflection. In an n-doped channel with p-doped boundaries the GH effect doubles the degeneracy of the lowest propagating mode, introducing a twofold degeneracy on top of the usual spin and valley degeneracies. This can be observed as a stepwise increase by 8e;{2}/h of the conductance with increasing channel width.

Theory of the topological anderson insulator.

We present an effective medium theory that explains the disorder-induced transition into a phase of quantized conductance, discovered in computer simulations of HgTe quantum wells. It is the combination of a random potential and quadratic corrections proportional to p2 sigma(z) to the Dirac Hamiltonian that can drive an ordinary band insulator into a topological insulator (having an inverted band gap). We calculate the location of the phase boundary at weak disorder and show that it corresponds to the crossing of a band edge rather than a mobility edge. Our mechanism for the formation of a topological Anderson insulator is generic, and would apply as well to three-dimensional semiconductors with strong spin-orbit coupling.

Electronic shot noise in fractal conductors.

By solving a master equation in the Sierpinski lattice and in a planar random-resistor network, we determine the scaling with size L of the shot noise power P due to elastic scattering in a fractal conductor. We find a power-law scaling P proportional, variantL;{d_{f}-2-alpha}, with an exponent depending on the fractal dimension d_{f} and the anomalous diffusion exponent alpha. This is the same scaling as the time-averaged current I[over ], which implies that the Fano factor F=P/2eI[over ] is scale-independent. We obtain a value of F=1/3 for anomalous diffusion that is the same as for normal diffusion, even if there is no smallest length scale below which the normal diffusion equation holds. The fact that F remains fixed at 1/3 as one crosses the percolation threshold in a random-resistor network may explain recent measurements of a doping-independent Fano factor in a graphene flake.

One-parameter scaling at the dirac point in graphene.

We numerically calculate the conductivity sigma of an undoped graphene sheet (size L) in the limit of a vanishingly small lattice constant. We demonstrate one-parameter scaling for random impurity scattering and determine the scaling function beta(sigma)=dlnsigma/dlnL. Contrary to a recent prediction, the scaling flow has no fixed point (beta>0) for conductivities up to and beyond the symplectic metal-insulator transition. Instead, the data support an alternative scaling flow for which the conductivity at the Dirac point increases logarithmically with sample size in the absence of intervalley scattering--without reaching a scale-invariant limit.

Sub-Poissonian shot noise in graphene.

We calculate the mode-dependent transmission probability of massless Dirac fermions through an ideal strip of graphene (length L, width W, no impurities or defects) to obtain the conductance and shot noise as a function of Fermi energy. We find that the minimum conductivity of order e2/h at the Dirac point (when the electron and hole excitations are degenerate) is associated with a maximum of the Fano factor (the ratio of noise power and mean current). For short and wide graphene strips the Fano factor at the Dirac point equals 1/3, 3 times smaller than for a Poisson process. This is the same value as for a disordered metal, which is remarkable since the classical dynamics of the Dirac fermions is ballistic.

Exponential sensitivity to dephasing of electrical conduction through a quantum dot.

According to random-matrix theory, interference effects in the conductance of a ballistic chaotic quantum dot should vanish proportional to (tau(phi)/tau(D))(p) when the dephasing time tau(phi) becomes small compared to the mean dwell time tau(D). Aleiner and Larkin have predicted that the power law crosses over to an exponential suppression proportional to exp((-tau(E)/tau(phi)) when tau(phi) drops below the Ehrenfest time tau(E). We report the first observation of this crossover in a computer simulation of universal conductance fluctuations. Their theory also predicts an exponential suppression proportional to exp((-tau(E)/tau(D)) in the absence of dephasing--which is not observed. We show that the effective random-matrix theory proposed previously for quantum dots without dephasing explains both observations.

Hypersensitivity to perturbations of quantum-chaotic wave-packet dynamics.

We reexamine the problem of the "Loschmidt echo," that measures the sensitivity to perturbation of quantum-chaotic dynamics. The overlap squared M(t) of two wave packets evolving under slightly different Hamiltonian is shown to have the double-exponential initial decay proportional to exp(-constant x e(2lambda(0)t)) in the main part of the phase space. The coefficient lambda(0) is the self-averaging Lyapunov exponent. The average decay (-)M proportional to e(-lambda(1)t) is single exponential with a different coefficient lambda(1). The volume of phase space that contributes to (-)M vanishes in the classical limit variant Planck-->0 for times less than the Ehrenfest time tau(E)=1/2lambda0(-1)|ln Planck|. It is only after the Ehrenfest time that the average decay is representative for a typical initial condition.

Quantum optical communication rates through an amplifying random medium.

We study the competing effects of stimulated and spontaneous emission on the information capacity of an amplifying disordered waveguide. At the laser threshold the capacity reaches a "universal" limit, independent of the degree of disorder. Whether or not this limit is larger or smaller than the capacity without amplification depends on the disorder, as well as on the input power. Explicit expressions are obtained for heterodyne detection of coherent states, and generalized for an arbitrary detection scheme.

Hierarchical model for the scale-dependent velocity of waves in random media.

Elastic waves of short wavelength propagating through the upper layer of the Earth appear to move faster at large separations of source and receiver than at short separations. Existing perturbation theories predict a linear increase of the velocity shift with increasing separation and cannot describe the saturation of the velocity shift at large separations that is seen in computer simulations. We point out that this nonperturbative problem can be solved using a model developed originally for the study of directed polymers. The saturation velocity is found to scale with the four-thirds power of the root-mean-square amplitude of the velocity fluctuations, in good agreement with the computer simulations.