Browsing by Author "Chao, Sung-Po"

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Kane-Mele Hubbard model on a zigzag ribbon: Stability of the topological edge states and quantum phase transitions
(2014-07-14)
Chung, Chung-Hou
;
Lee, Der-Hau
;
Chao, Sung-Po
;
電子物理學系
;
Department of Electrophysics
We study the quantum phases and phase transitions of the Kane-Mele Hubbard (KMH) model on a zigzag ribbon of honeycomb lattice at a finite size via the weak-coupling renormalization group (RG) approach. In the noninteracting limit, the Kane-Mele (KM) model is known to support topological edge states where electrons show helical property with orientations of the spin and momentum being locked. The effective interedge hopping terms are generated due to finite-size effect. In the presence of an on-site Coulomb (Hubbard) interaction and the interedge hoppings, special focus is put on the stability of the topological edge states (TI phase) in the KMH model against (i) the charge and spin gaped (II) phase, (ii) the charge gaped but spin gapless (IC) phase, and (iii) the spin gaped but charge gapless (CI) phase depending on the number (even/odd) of the zigzag ribbons, doping level (electron filling factor) and the ratio of the Coulomb interaction to the interedge tunneling. We discuss different phase diagrams for even and odd numbers of zigzag ribbons. We find the TI-CI, II-IC, and II-CI quantum phase transitions are of the Kosterlitz-Thouless (KT) type. By computing various correlation functions, we further analyze the nature and leading instabilities of these phases. The relevance of our results for graphene is discussed.
Nonequilibrium transport of helical Luttinger liquids through a quantum dot
(2013-08-08)
Chao, Sung-Po
;
Silotri, Salman A.
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Chung, Chung-Hou
;
電子物理學系
;
Department of Electrophysics
We study a steady-state nonequilibrium transport between two interacting helical edge states of a two-dimensional topological insulator, described by helical Luttinger liquids, through a quantum dot. For a noninteracting dot, the current is obtained analytically by including the self-energy correction to the dot's Green function. For an interacting dot, we use the equation-of-motion method to study the influence of weak on-site Coulomb interaction on the transport. We find the metal-to-insulator quantum phase transition for attractive or repulsive interactions in the leads when the magnitude of the interaction strength characterized by a charge sector Luttinger parameter K goes beyond a critical value. The critical Luttinger parameter K-cr depends on the hopping strengths between the dot and the leads, as well as the energy level of the dot with respect to the Fermi levels of the leads, ranging from the weak-interaction regime for the dot level off-resonance to the strong-interaction regime for the dot in resonance with the equilibrium Fermi level. Near the transition, there are various singular behaviors of current noise, dot density of state, and the decoherence rate (inverse of lifetime) of the dot, which are briefly discussed.
Tunneling between helical Majorana modes and helical Luttinger liquids
(2015-06-12)
Chao, Sung-Po
;
Schmidt, Thomas L.
;
Chung, Chung-Hou
;
電子物理學系
;
Department of Electrophysics
We propose and study the charge transport through single and double quantum point contacts setup between helical Majorana modes and an interacting helical Luttinger liquid. We show that the differential conductance decreases for stronger repulsive interactions and that the point contacts become insulating above a critical interaction strength. For a single-point contact, the differential conductance as a function of bias voltage shows a series of peaks due to Andreev reflection of electrons in the Majorana modes. In the case of two point contacts, interference phenomena make the structure of the individual resonance peaks less universal and showmodulations with different separation distance between the contacts. For small separation distance, the overall features remain similar to the case of a single-point contact.