Quantum Hall states of high symmetry

We identify some hidden symmetries of Chern-Simons theories, such as appear in the effective theory for quantized Hall states. This allows us to determine which filling fractions admit spin-singlet quantum Hall states. Our results shed some light on states already observed at , and transitions between them. We identify SU(2), or higher, symmetries of many additional states — including spin-polarized states. Our symmetries classify low-lying excited states and may be of use in the construction of trial wavefunctions, but are typically not present in the edge theory, where they are lifted by non-universal couplings.     

High-temperature differentiability of lattice Gibbs states by Dobrushin uniqueness techniques

We establish conditions for the differentiability, to any order, of the Gibbs states of classical lattice systems with arbitrary compact single-spin space and with interactions in the Dobrushin uniqueness region. The derivatives are expressed as series expansions and are shown to be continuous on the uniqueness region. We also provide a procedure for estimating the size of the derivatives. These results verify a conjecture of L. Gross and extend his results in “Absence of second-order phase transitions in the Dobrushin uniqueness region,”Journal of Statistical Physics 25(1):57–72 (1981). The techniques of this paper are based on those employed by Gross.     

Topological Entanglement Entropy from the Holographic Partition Function

We study the entropy of chiral 2+01-dimensional topological phases, where there are both gapped bulk excitations and gapless edge modes. We show how the entanglement entropy of both types of excitations can be encoded in a single partition function. This partition function is holographic because it can be expressed entirely in terms of the conformal field theory describing the edge modes. We give a general expression for the holographic partition function, and discuss several examples in depth, including abelian and non-abelian fractional quantum Hall states, and $p+ip$ superconductors. We extend these results to include a point contact allowing tunneling between two points on the edge, which causes thermodynamic entropy associated with the point contact to be lost with decreasing temperature. Such a perturbation effectively breaks the system in two, and we can identify the thermodynamic entropy loss with the loss of the edge entanglement entropy. From these results, we obtain a simple interpretation of the non-integer ‘ground state degeneracy’ which is obtained in 1+1-dimensional quantum impurity problems: its logarithm is a 2+1-dimensional topological entanglement entropy.     

A renormalization group analysis of turbulent transport

The field-theoretic renormalization group is used to derive scaling relations for the transport of passive scalars by an incompressible velocity field with a specified energy spectrum. Results are obtained with the analog of the expansion of critical phenomena and compared to exact results which are available for shear flows in two dimensions.A 1/N expansion is proposed for the regions in which the expansion fails.     

Extended hubbard model with ring exchange: a route to a non-Abelian topological phase

We propose an extended Hubbard model on a 2D kagome lattice with an additional ring exchange term. The particles can be either bosons or spinless fermions. We analyze the model at the special filling fraction 1/6, where it is closely related to the quantum dimer model. We show how to arrive at an exactly soluble point whose ground state is the "d-isotopy" transition point into a stable phase with a certain type of non-Abelian topological order. Near the "special" values, d=2cos(pi/(k+2), this topological phase has anyonic excitations closely related to SU(2) Chern-Simons theory at level k.     

Semi-automatic sparse preconditioners for high-order finite element methods on non-uniform meshes

High-order finite elements often have a higher accuracy per degree of freedom than the classical low-order finite elements. However, in the context of implicit time-stepping methods, high-order finite elements present challenges to the construction of efficient simulations due to the high cost of inverting the denser finite element matrix. There are many cases where simulations are limited by the memory required to store the matrix and/or the algorithmic components of the linear solver. We are particularly interested in preconditioned Krylov methods for linear systems generated by discretization of elliptic partial differential equations with high-order finite elements. Using a preconditioner like Algebraic Multigrid can be costly in terms of memory due to the need to store matrix information at the various levels. We present a novel method for defining a preconditioner for systems generated by high-order finite elements that is based on a much sparser system than the original high-order finite element system. We investigate the performance for non-uniform meshes on a cube and a cubed sphere mesh, showing that the sparser preconditioner is more efficient and uses significantly less memory. Finally, we explore new methods to construct the sparse preconditioner and examine their effectiveness for non-uniform meshes. We compare results to a direct use of Algebraic Multigrid as a preconditioner and to a two-level additive Schwarz method.     

Numerical calculation of the neutral fermion gap at the ν=5/2 fractional quantum Hall state

We present the first numerical computation of the neutral fermion gap, Δ(F), in the ν=5/2 quantum Hall state, which is analogous to the energy gap for a Bogoliubov-de Gennes quasiparticle in a superconductor. We find Δ(F)≈0.027e(2)/ε?(0), comparable to the charge gap. We also deduce an effective Fermi velocity v(F) for neutral fermions from the low-energy spectra for odd numbers of electrons, and thereby obtain a correlation length ξ(F)=v(F)/Δ(F)≈1.3?(0). We comment on implications for experiments, topological quantum information processing, and electronic mechanisms of superconductivity.     

Effects of dissipation on a quantum critical point with disorder

We study the effects of dissipation on a disordered quantum phase transition with O(N) order-parameter symmetry by applying a strong-disorder renormalization group to the Landau-Ginzburg-Wilson field theory of the problem. We find that Ohmic dissipation results in a nonperturbative infinite-randomness critical point with unconventional activated dynamical scaling while super-Ohmic damping leads to conventional behavior. We discuss applications to the superconductor-metal transition in nanowires and to the Hertz theory of the itinerant antiferromagnetic transition.     

Proton-deuteron elastic scattering at 135 MeV with BINA

Differential cross sections and vector analyzing powers for the p + d → p + d reaction have been measured using a new experimental setup (BINA) at KVI. The data are compared with published results and are found to be significantly different.     

Syntheses of ethyl 3-deoxy-3,3-difluoro-d-arabino-heptulosonate and analogues

The difluorinated analogues of 3-deoxy-d-arabino-heptulosonic acid (DAH) 12, 24 and its enantiomer have been synthesised from d- and l-erythrose via a Reformatsky reaction which gave a mixture of diastereoiosmers in favour of the anti isomer.