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We study effects of strain on the electronic properties of the kagome lattice in a tight-binding formalism with spin-orbit coupling (SOC). The degeneracy at the $\Gamma$ point evolves into a pair of emergent tilted Dirac cones under uniaxial strain, where the anisotropy and tilting of the bands depend on the magnitude and direction of the strain field. SOC opens gaps at the emergent Dirac points, making the flatband topological, characterized by a nontrivial $\mathbb{Z}_2$ index. Strains of a few percent drive the system into trivial or topological phases. This confirms that moderate strain can be used to engineer anisotropic Dirac bands with tunable properties to study new phases in kagome lattices.

We present a detailed analysis of the role of native point defects in the antiferromagnetic (AFM) phases of bulk chromium nitride (CrN). We perform first-principles calculations using local spin-density approximation, including local interaction effects (LSDA+U), to study the two lowest energy AFM models expected to describe the low-temperature phase of the material. We study the formation energies, lattice deformations and electronic and magnetic structure introduced by native point defects. We find that, as expected, nitrogen vacancies are the most likely defect present in the material at low temperatures. Nitrogen vacancies present different charged states in the cubic AFM model, exhibiting two transition energies, which could be measurable by thermometry experiments and could help identify the AFM structure in a sample. These vacancies also result in partial spin polarization of the induced impurity band, which would have interesting consequences in transport experiments. Other point defects have also signature electronic and magnetic structure that could be identified in scanning probe experiments., Comment: 8 pages

We present studies of the Coulomb blockade and Kondo regimes of transport through a quantum dot connected to current leads through spin-polarizing quantum point contacts (QPCs). This structure, arising from the effect of lateral spin-orbit fields defining the QPCs, results in spin-polarized currents even in the absence of external magnetic fields and greatly affects the correlations in the dot. Using equation-of-motion and numerical renormalization group calculations we obtain the conductance and spin polarization for this system under different parameter regimes. We find that the system exhibits spin-polarized conductance in both the Coulomb blockade and Kondo regimes, all in the absence of applied magnetic fields. We analyze the role that the spin-dependent tunneling amplitudes of the QPC play in determining the charge and net magnetic moment in the dot. These effects, controllable by lateral gate voltages, may provide an alternative approach for exploring Kondo correlations, as well as possible spin devices

Theoretical results for a single electron in multi-level system given by a lens-shape self-assembled quantum dot in the presence of an intense harmonic electric field are presented. A non-perturbative Floquet approach is used to study the dynamical localization of the particle when going beyond the two-level approach by introducing the full spectral level structure. It is discussed the role of the different quasi-energy sidebands as the parameters of the system change. It is found that the contribution of different drive harmonics is controlled by fine tuning of field intensity. It is also shown that avoided crossings in the quasi-energy spectrum are correlated with the spectral force of the sidebands and dynamical state localization., Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures

In this paper we show that it is possible to switch the spin polarization of the photocurrent signal obtained from a single self-assembled quantum dot photodiode under the effect of elliptically polarized light by just increasing the light intensity. In the nonlinear mechanism treated here, intense elliptically polarized light creates an effective exchange interaction between the exciton spin states through the biexciton state. This effect can be used as a dynamical switch to invert the spin-polarization of the extracted photocurrent. We further show that the effect persists in realistic ensembles of dots, making this a powerful technique to dynamically generate spin-polarized electrons., Comment: Submitted to PRL

We have studied spin carrier dynamics under full spin-orbit coupling. The anisotropy of dispersions for independent circular spinor polarizations is explored as a possible vertical multichannel voltage controlled spin-filter. Small voltage variations are found to select the current polarizations in a resonant tunneling geometry., Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures