Biomedical subjects

S L Sondhi

Publications and source records attributed to S L Sondhi.

9 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2006

Current noise in the vicinity of the 2D superconductor-insulator quantum critical point.

Systems near to quantum critical points show universal scaling in response to external probes. We consider whether this scaling is reflected in their out-of-equilibrium fluctuations. We study current noise in the metallic state at the z=1 quantum critical point between a superconductor and an insulator in two dimensions. Using a Boltzmann-Langevin approach within a 1/N expansion, we show that the current noise obeys a universal scaling form S_{j}=TPhi[T/T_{eff}(E)], with T_{eff} proportional, variantsqrt[E]. This treatment recovers Johnson noise in thermal equilibrium and S_{j} proportional, variantsqrt[E] at strong electric fields. The latter differs significantly from both the shot noise in conventional metals (diffusive Fermi liquids) and the free carrier result, due to strong correlations between the critical bosonic excitations. Current-noise measurements could therefore help clarify the physics of the destruction of superconductivity in thin film superconductors.

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PubMed2005

Nonlinear quantum critical transport and the Schwinger mechanism for a superfluid-mott-insulator transition of bosons.

Scaling arguments imply that quantum-critical points exhibit universal nonlinear responses to external probes. We investigate the origins of such nonlinearities in transport, which is especially problematic since the system is necessarily driven far from equilibrium. We argue that for a wide class of systems the new ingredient that enters is the Schwinger mechanism--the production of carriers from the vacuum by the applied field--which is then balanced against a scattering rate that is itself set by the field. We show by explicit computation how this works for the case of the symmetric superfluid-Mott insulator transition of bosons.

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PubMed2005

Why spin ice obeys the ice rules.

The low-temperature entropy of the spin ice compounds, such as and , is well described by the nearest-neighbor antiferromagnetic Ising model on the pyrochlore lattice, i.e., by the "ice rules." This is surprising since the dominant coupling between the spins is their long ranged dipole interaction. We show that this phenomenon can be understood rather elegantly: one can construct a model dipole interaction, by adding terms of shorter range, which yields precisely the same ground states, and hence entropy, as the nearest-neighbor interaction. A treatment of the small difference between the model and true dipole interactions reproduces the numerical work by Gingras et al. in detail. We are also led to a more general concept of projective equivalence between interactions.

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PubMed2004

Dipolar spin correlations in classical pyrochlore magnets.

We study spin correlations for the highly frustrated classical pyrochlore lattice antiferromagnets with O(N) symmetry in the limit T-->0. We conjecture that a local constraint obeyed by the extensively degenerate ground states dictates a dipolar form for the asymptotic spin correlations, at all N not equal 2 for which the system is paramagnetic down to T=0. We verify this conjecture in the cases N=1 and N=3 by simulations and to all orders in the 1/N expansion about the solvable N=infinity limit. Remarkably, the N=infinity formulas are an excellent fit, at all distances, to the correlators at N=3 and even at N=1. Thus we obtain a simple analytical expression also for the correlations of the equivalent models of spin ice and cubic water ice, Ic.

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PubMed2003

Coulomb and liquid dimer models in three dimensions.

We study classical hard-core dimer models on three-dimensional lattices using analytical approaches and Monte Carlo simulations. On the bipartite cubic lattice, a local gauge field generalization of the height representation used on the square lattice predicts that the dimers are in a critical Coulomb phase with algebraic, dipolar correlations, in excellent agreement with our large-scale Monte Carlo simulations. The nonbipartite fcc and Fisher lattices lack such a representation, and we find that these models have both confined and exponentially deconfined but no critical phases. We conjecture that extended critical phases are realized only on bipartite lattices, even in higher dimensions.

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PubMed2002

Gaussian superconducting fluctuations, thermal transport, and the nernst effect.

We calculate the contribution of superconducting fluctuations to thermal transport in the normal state, at low magnetic fields. We do so in the Gaussian approximation to their critical dynamics which is also the Aslamazov-Larkin approximation in the microscopics. Our results for the thermal conductivity tensor and the transverse thermoelectric response are new. The latter compare favorably with the data of Ong and collaborators on the Nernst effect in the cuprates.

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PubMed2002

Order by distortion and string modes in pyrochlore antiferromagnets.

We study the effects of magnetoelastic couplings on pyrochlore antiferromagnets. We employ Landau theory, extending an investigation begun by Yamashita and Ueda for the case of S = 1, and classical analyses to argue that such couplings generate bond order via a spin-Peierls transition. This is followed by, or concurrent with, a transition into one of several possible low-temperature Néel phases, with most simply collinear, but also coplanar or mixed spin patterns. In a collinear Néel phase, a dispersionless stringlike magnon mode dominates the resulting excitation spectrum, providing a distinctive signature of the parent geometrically frustrated state. We comment on the experimental situation.

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PubMed2001

Resonating valence bond phase in the triangular lattice quantum dimer model.

We study the quantum dimer model on the triangular lattice, which is expected to describe the singlet dynamics of frustrated Heisenberg models in phases where valence bond configurations dominate their physics. We find, in contrast to the square lattice, that there is a truly short ranged resonating valence bond phase with no gapless excitations and with deconfined, gapped, spinons for a finite range of parameters. We also establish the presence of crystalline dimer phases.

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PubMed2000

Fractional quantum hall effect in infinite-layer systems.

Stacked two dimensional electron systems in transverse magnetic fields exhibit three dimensional fractional quantum Hall phases. We analyze the simplest such phases and find novel bulk properties, e.g. , irrational braiding. These phases host "one and a half" dimensional surface phases in which motion in one direction is chiral. We offer a general analysis of conduction in the latter by combining sum rule and renormalization group arguments, and find that when interlayer tunneling is marginal or irrelevant they are chiral semimetals that conduct only at T > 0 or with disorder.

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