Phases of two coupled Luttinger liquids

Edge Reconstruction of a Time-Reversal Invariant Insulator: Compressible-Incompressible Stripes

Two-dimensional (2D) topological electronic insulators are known to give rise to gapless edge modes, which underlie low energy dynamics, including electrical and thermal transport. This has been thoroughly investigated in the context of quantum Hall phases, and time-reversal invariant topological insulators. Here we study the edge of a 2D, topologically trivial insulating phase, as a function of the strength of the electronic interactions and the steepness of the confining potential. For sufficiently smooth confining potentials, alternating compressible and incompressible stripes appear at the edge. Our findings signal the emergence of gapless edge modes which may give rise to finite conductance at the edge. This would suggest a novel scenario of a nontopological metal-insulator transition in clean 2D systems. The incompressible stripes appear at commensurate fillings and may exhibit broken translational invariance along the edge in the form of charge density wave ordering. These are separated by structureless compressible stripes.

Competing orders in one-dimensional spin-3/2 fermionic systems

Novel competing orders are found in spin-3/2 cold atomic systems in one-dimensional optical traps and lattices. In particular, the quartetting phase, a four-fermion counterpart of Cooper pairing, exists in a large portion of the phase diagram. The transition between the quartetting and singlet Cooper pairing phases is controlled by an Ising symmetry breaking in one of the spin channels. The singlet Cooper pairing phase also survives in the purely repulsive interaction regime. In addition, various charge and bond ordered phases are identified at commensurate fillings in lattice systems.

Resonating valence bond wave function for the two-dimensional fractional spin liquid

The unconventional low-lying spin excitations, recently observed in neutron scattering experiments on Cs2CuCl4, are explained with a spin liquid wave function. The dispersion relation as well as the wave vector of the incommensurate spin correlations are well reproduced within a projected BCS wave function with gapless and fractionalized spin-1/2 excitations around the nodes of the BCS gap function. The proposed wave function is shown to be very accurate for one-dimensional spin-1/2 systems and remains similarly accurate in the two-dimensional model corresponding to Cs2CuCl4, thus representing a good ansatz for describing spin fractionalization in two dimensions.

Three-dimensional quasi-Tonks gas in a harmonic trap

We analyze the macroscopic dynamics of a Bose gas in a harmonic trap with a superimposed two-dimensional optical lattice, assuming a weak coupling between different lattice sites. We consider the situation in which the local chemical potential at each lattice site can be considered as that provided by the Lieb-Liniger solution. Because of the weak coupling between sites and the form of the chemical potential, the three-dimensional ground-state density profile and the excitation spectrum acquire remarkable properties different from both 1D and 3D gases. We call this system a quasi-Tonks gas. We discuss the range of applicability of this regime, as well as realistic experimental situations where it can be observed.

Broken time-reversal symmetry in strongly correlated ladder structures

We provide, for the first time, in a doped strongly correlated system (two-leg ladder), a controlled theoretical demonstration of the existence of a state in which long-range ordered orbital currents are arranged in a staggered pattern, coexisting with a charge density wave. The method used is the highly accurate density-matrix renormalization group technique. This brings us closer to recent proposals that this order is realized in the enigmatic pseudogap phase of the cuprate high temperature superconductors.

Strongly correlated fractional quantum Hall line junctions

We have studied a clean finite-length line junction between interacting counterpropagating single-branch fractional quantum Hall edge channels. Exact solutions for low-lying excitations and transport properties are obtained when the two edges belong to quantum Hall systems with different filling factors and interact via the long-range Coulomb interaction. Charging effects due to the coupling to external edge-channel leads are fully taken into account. Conductances and power laws in the current-voltage characteristics of tunneling are strongly affected by interedge correlations.

Staggered flux phase in a model of strongly correlated electrons

We present numerical evidence for the existence of a staggered flux (SF) phase in the half-filled two-leg t-U-V-J ladder, with true long-range order in the countercirculating currents. The density-matrix renormalization-group finite-size scaling approach, generalized to describe complex-valued Hamil-tonians and wave functions, is employed. The SF phase exhibits robust currents at intermediate values of the interaction strength.