The one and a half monopoles solution of the SU(2) Yang–Mills–Higgs field theory

Recently we have reported on the existence of finite energy SU(2) Yang–Mills–Higgs particle of one-half topological charge. In this paper, we show that this one-half monopole can co-exist with a ’t Hooft–Polyakov monopole. The magnetic charge of the one-half monopole is of opposite sign to the magnetic charge of the ’t Hooft–Polyakov monopole. However the net magnetic charge of the configuration is zero due to the presence of a semi-infinite Dirac string along the positive z$z$-axis that carries the other half of the magnetic monopole charge. The solution possesses gauge potentials that are singular along the z$z$-axis, elsewhere they are regular. The total energy is found to increase with the strength of the Higgs field self-coupling constant λ$\lambda$. However the dipole separation and the magnetic dipole moment decrease with λ$\lambda$. This solution is non-BPS even in the BPS limit when the Higgs self-coupling constant vanishes.     

Confinement and dynamical chiral symmetry breaking in a non-perturbative renormalizable quark model

Inspired by the construction of the Gribov–Zwanziger action in the Landau gauge, we introduce a quark model exhibiting both confinement and chiral symmetry aspects. An important feature is the incorporation of spontaneous chiral symmetry breaking in a renormalizable fashion. The quark propagator in the condensed vacuum turns out to be of a confining type. Besides a real pole, it exhibits complex conjugate poles. The resulting spectral form is explicitly shown to violate positivity, indicative of its unphysical character. Moreover, the ensuing quark mass function fits well to existing lattice data. To further validate the physical nature of the model, we identify a massless pseudoscalar (i.e. a pion) in the chiral limit and present estimates for the ρ$\rho$ meson mass and decay constant.     

Rectification effect about vacuum separating carbon nanotube bundle predicted by first-principles study

For the molecular spintronics transport systems, we propose that the spin current rectifier can be constructed using the nonmagnetic lead. The proposal is confirmed according to the first-principles study of the transport characteristics of a vacuum separating (15,0)$(15,0)$ carbon nanotube bundle where only one zigzag edge is hydrogenated. The strong rectification effect for spin (charge) current is obtained in the case of the magnetic parallel (anti-parallel) configuration of two zigzag edges. Our investigations indicate that such device can be used as the spin filter and the counterpart of the p–n$p\text{–}n$ junction in the field of molecular electronics.     

Topological transitions in multi-band superconductors

The search for Majorana fermions has been concentrated in topological insulators or superconductors. In general, the existence of these modes requires the presence of spin–orbit interactions and of an external magnetic field. The former implies in having systems with broken inversion symmetry, while the latter breaks time reversal invariance. In a recent paper, we have shown that a two-band metal with an attractive inter-band interaction has non-trivial superconducting properties, if the k$k$-dependent hybridization is anti-symmetric in the wave-vector. This is the case, if the crystalline potential mixes states with different parities as for orbitals with angular momentum l$l$ and l+1$l+1$. In this paper we take into account the effect of an external magnetic field, not considered in the previous investigation, in a two-band metal and show how it modifies the topological properties of its superconducting state. We also discuss the conditions for the appearance of Majorana fermions in this system.     

Aspects of QCD current algebra on a null plane

Consequences of QCD current algebra formulated on a light-like hyperplane are derived for the forward scattering of vector and axial–vector currents on an arbitrary hadronic target. It is shown that current algebra gives rise to a special class of sum rules that are direct consequences of the independent chiral symmetry that exists at every point on the two-dimensional transverse plane orthogonal to the lightlike direction. These sum rules are obtained by exploiting the closed, infinite-dimensional algebra satisfied by the transverse moments of null-plane axial–vector and vector charge distributions. In the special case of a nucleon target, this procedure leads to the Adler–Weisberger, Gerasimov–Drell–Hearn, Cabibbo–Radicati and Fubini–Furlan–Rossetti sum rules. Matching to the dispersion-theoretic language which is usually invoked in deriving these sum rules, the moment sum rules are shown to be equivalent to algebraic constraints on forward S$S$-matrix elements in the Regge limit.     

Duality and defects in rational conformal field theory

We study topological defect lines in two-dimensional rational conformal field theory. Continuous variation of the location of such a defect does not change the value of a correlator. Defects separating different phases of local CFTs with the same chiral symmetry are included in our discussion. We show how the resulting one-dimensional phase boundaries can be used to extract symmetries and order–disorder dualities of the CFT. The case of central charge c=4/5$c=4/5$, for which there are two inequivalent world sheet phases corresponding to the tetra-critical Ising model and the critical three-states Potts model, is treated as an illustrative example.     

Engineering of carbon-based superlight spin filter with negative differential resistance

Based on density functional theory and non-equilibrium Green's function, we investigate the edge hydrogenation and oxidation effects on the spin transport of devices consisting of a zigzag C₂N nanoribbon (ZC₂NNR) embedded in zigzag graphene nanoribbons in parallel (P) and antiparallel (AP) spin configurations. The results show that device with edge hydrogenation exhibits dual spin filtering effect in AP spin configuration and obvious negative differential resistance in both P and AP spin configuration. By substituting oxygen for hydrogen as passivation atoms of ZC₂NNR, the spin filtering efficiency is as high as 100% in the P spin configuration, and the negative differential resistance is largely enhanced with a peak to valley ratio in excess of 4×10³. Our theoretical studies suggest that zigzag C₂N nanoribbon modulated by edge substitution has great potential in the design of future multifunctional spin devices.     

Bistability and steady-state spin squeezing in diamond nanostructures controlled by a nanomechanical resonator

As the quantum states of nitrogen vacancy (NV) center can be coherently manipulated and obtained at room temperature, it is important to generate steady-state spin squeezing in spin qubits associated with NV impurities in diamond. With this task we consider a new type of a hybrid magneto-nano-electromechanical resonator, the functionality of which is based on a magnetic-field induced deflection of an appropriate cantilever that oscillates between NV spins in diamond. We show that there is bistability and spin squeezing state due to the presence of the microwave field, despite the damping from mechanical damping. Moreover, we find that bistability and spin squeezing can be controlled by the microwave field and the parameter V_z$V_z$. Our scheme may have the potential application on spin clocks, magnetometers, and other measurements based on spin–spin system in diamond nanostructures.     

Spatial distribution of spin polarization in a channel on the surface of a topological insulator

We study the spatial distribution of electron spin polarization for a gate-controlled T-shaped channel on the surface of a three-dimensional topological insulator (3D TI). We demonstrate that an energy gap depending on channel geometry parameters is definitely opened due to the spatial confinement. Spin surface locking in momentum space for a uniform wide channel with Hamiltonian linearity in the wavevector is still kept, but it is broken with Hamiltonian nonlinearity in the wavevector, like that for two-dimensional surface states widely studied in the literature. However, the spin surface locking for a T-shaped channel is broken even with Hamiltonian linearity in the wavevector. Interestingly, the magnitude and direction of the in-plane spin polarization are spatially dependent in all regions due to the breaking of translational symmetry of the T-shaped channel system. These interesting findings for an electrically controlled nanostructure based on the 3D TI surface may be testable with the present experimental technique, and may provide further understanding the nature of 3D TI surface states.     

On a relativistic scalar particle subject to a Coulomb-type potential given by Lorentz symmetry breaking effects

The behaviour of a relativistic scalar particle in a possible scenario that arises from the violation of the Lorentz symmetry is investigated. The background of the Lorentz symmetry violation is defined by a tensor field that governs the Lorentz symmetry violation out of the Standard Model Extension. Thereby, we show that a Coulomb-type potential can be induced by Lorentz symmetry breaking effects and bound states solutions to the Klein–Gordon equation can be obtained. Further, we discuss the effects of this Coulomb-type potential on the confinement of the relativistic scalar particle to a linear confining potential by showing that bound states solutions to the Klein–Gordon equation can also be achieved, and obtain a quantum effect characterized by the dependence of a parameter of the linear confining potential on the quantum numbers {n,l}$\{n,l\}$ of the system.     

Vortex configurations on a thin superconducting spherical shell in the presence of a magnetic dipole

In this work we study vortex configurations on a thin superconducting spherical shell of radius R and thickness d  (R?d?ξ)$(R?d?\xi )$ with a magnetic dipole inside it. The point magnetic dipole (with magnetic moment, m_z$m_z$) is oriented along one of the sphere main axis. It is placed a distance z₀$z_0$ from the center of the sphere. Due to the symmetry of the sample, there are vortices and antivortices pancakes on the shell resulting in zero total vorticity. The vortex interactions with the shielding currents produced by the external fields – as well as with other vortices – are calculated within the London limit. The vortex configurations are obtained by solving numerically the Bardeen–Stephen equation of motion for the vortices. For z₀≈0$z_0\approx 0$ the most frequent vortex configurations present equal arrangements of vortices and antivortices on the north and south hemispheres. For z₀≈0.5R$z_0\approx 0.5R$, the diversity of vortex configurations increases, with a higher number of configurations (in comparison to smaller z₀$z_0$) having different vortices and antivortices distributions on each shell hemisphere. We also study the equilibrium states dependence on the magnetic dipole strength and position.     

Collective mode evidence of high-spin bosonization in a trapped one-dimensional atomic Fermi gas with tunable spin

We calculate the frequency of collective modes of a one-dimensional repulsively interacting Fermi gas with high-spin symmetry confined in harmonic traps at zero temperature. This is a system realizable with fermionic alkaline-earth-metal atoms such as ¹⁷³Yb, which displays an exact SU(κ$\kappa$) spin symmetry with κ?2$\kappa ?2$ and behaves like a spinless interacting Bose gas in the limit of infinite spin components κ→∞$\kappa \to \infty$, namely high-spin bosonization. We solve the homogeneous equation of state of the high-spin Fermi system by using Bethe ansatz technique and obtain the density distribution in harmonic traps based on local density approximation. The frequency of collective modes is calculated by exactly solving the zero-temperature hydrodynamic equation. In the limit of large number of spin-components, we show that the mode frequency of the system approaches that of a one-dimensional spinless interacting Bose gas, as a result of high-spin bosonization. Our prediction of collective modes is in excellent agreement with a very recent measurement for a Fermi gas of ¹⁷³Yb atoms with tunable spin confined in a two-dimensional tight optical lattice.     

On the role of symmetries in the theory of photonic crystals

We discuss the role of the symmetries in photonic crystals and classify them according to the Cartan–Altland–Zirnbauer scheme. Of particular importance are complex conjugation C$C$ and time-reversal T$T$, but we identify also other significant symmetries. Borrowing the jargon of the classification theory of topological insulators, we show that C$C$ is a “particle–hole-type symmetry” rather than a “time-reversal symmetry” if one considers the Maxwell operator in the first-order formalism where the dynamical Maxwell equations can be rewritten as a Schrödinger equation; The symmetry which implements physical time-reversal is a “chiral-type symmetry”. We justify by an analysis of the band structure why the first-order formalism seems to be more advantageous than the second-order formalism. Moreover, based on the Schrödinger formalism, we introduce a class of effective (tight-binding) models called Maxwell–Harper operators. Some considerations about the breaking of the “particle–hole-type symmetry” in the case of gyrotropic crystals are added at the end of this paper.     

The emergence of different tail exponents in the distributions of firm size variables

We discuss a mechanism through which inversion symmetry (i.e., invariance of a joint probability density function under the exchange of variables) and Gibrat’s law generate power-law distributions with different tail exponents. Using a dataset of firm size variables, that is, tangible fixed assets K$K$, the number of workers L$L$, and sales Y$Y$, we confirm that these variables have power-law tails with different exponents, and that inversion symmetry and Gibrat’s law hold. Based on these findings, we argue that there exists a plane in the three dimensional space (logK,logL,logY)$(logK,logL,logY)$, with respect to which the joint probability density function for the three variables is invariant under the exchange of variables. We provide empirical evidence suggesting that this plane fits the data well, and argue that the plane can be interpreted as the Cobb–Douglas production function, which has been extensively used in various areas of economics since it was first introduced almost a century ago.     

Symmetry protected topological phases in spin-1 ladders and their phase transitions

We study two-legged spin-1 ladder systems with D₂×σ$D_2\times \sigma$ symmetry group, where D₂$D_2$ is discrete spin rotational symmetry and σ$\sigma$ means interchain reflection symmetry. The system has one trivial phase and seven nontrivial symmetry protected topological (SPT) phases. We construct Hamiltonians to realize all of these SPT phases and study the phase transitions between them. Our numerical results indicate that there is no direct continuous transition between any two SPT phases we studied. We interpret our results via topological nonlinear sigma model effective field theory, and further conjecture that generally there is no direct continuous transition between two SPT phases in one dimension if the symmetry group is discrete at all length scales.     

A bilayer Double Semion model with symmetry-enriched topological order

We construct a new model of two-dimensional quantum spin systems that combines intrinsic topological orders and a global symmetry called flavour symmetry. It is referred as the bilayer Doubled Semion model (bDS) and is an instance of symmetry-enriched topological order. A honeycomb bilayer lattice is introduced to combine a Double Semion Topological Order with a global spin–flavour symmetry to get the fractionalization of its quasiparticles. The bDS model exhibits non-trivial braiding self-statistics of excitations and its dual model constitutes a Symmetry-Protected Topological Order with novel edge states. This dual model gives rise to a bilayer Non-Trivial Paramagnet that is invariant under the flavour symmetry and the well-known spin flip symmetry.     

Symmetry breaking and restoration for interacting scalar and gauge fields in Lifshitz type theories

We consider the one-loop effective potential at zero and finite temperature in field theories with anisotropic space–time scaling, with critical exponent z=2$z=2$, including both scalar and gauge fields. Depending on the relative strength of the coupling constants for the gauge and scalar interactions, we find that there is a symmetry breaking term induced at one loop at zero temperature and we find symmetry restoration through a first-order phase transition at high temperature.