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Twisted bilayer graphene near the magic angle is known to have a cascade of insulating phases at integer filling factors of the low-energy bands. In this Letter we address the nature of these phases through an unrestricted, large-scale Hartree-Fock calculation on the lattice that self-consistently accounts for all electronic bands. Using numerically unbiased methods, we show that Coulomb interactions produce ferromagnetic insulating states at integer fillings $\nu\in[-3,3]$ with maximal spin polarization $M_{\text{FM}}=4-|\nu|$. We find that the $\nu=0$ state is a pure ferromagnet, whereas all other insulating states are spin-valley polarized. At odd filling factors $|\nu|=1,3$ those states have a quantum anomalous Hall effect with Chern number $\mathcal{C}=1$. Except for the $\nu=0,-2$ states, all other integer fillings have insulating phases with additional sublattice symmetry breaking and antiferromagnetism in the remote bands. We map the metal-insulator transitions of these phases as a function of the effective dielectric constant. Our results establish the importance of large-scale lattice calculations to faithfully determine the ground states of TBG at integer fillings., Comment: 5+1 pages, 3 figures

The thermal activation process by which a system passes from one local energy minimum to another is a recurring motif in physics, chemistry, and biology. For instance, biopolymer chains are typically modeled in terms of energy landscapes, with folded and unfolded conformations represented by two distinct wells separated by a barrier. The rate of transfer between wells depends primarily on the height of the barrier, but it also depends on the details of the shape of the landscape along the trajectory. We consider the case of bias due to an external force, analogous to the pulling force applied in optical tweezer experiments on biopolymers. Away from the Arrhenius-law limit and well out of equilibrium, somewhat idiosyncratic behavior might be expected. Instead, we identify universal behavior of the biased activated-barrier-crossing process and demonstrate that data collapse onto a universal curve can be achieved for simulated data over a wide variety of energy landscapes having barriers of different height and shape and for loading rates spanning many orders of magnitude., Comment: 9 pages, 3 figures

The dynamical behavior of a quantum many-particle system is characterized by the lifetime of its excitations. When the system is perturbed, observables of any non-conserved quantity decay exponentially, but those of a conserved quantity relax to equilibrium with a power law. Such processes are associated with a dynamical exponent $z$ that relates the spread of correlations in space and time. We present numerical results for the Fredkin model, a quantum spin chain with a three-body interaction term, which exhibits an unusually large dynamical exponent. We discuss our efforts to produce a reliable estimate $z$=3.16(1) through direct simulation of the quantum evolution and to explain the slow dynamics in terms of an excited bond that executes a constrained random walk in Monte Carlo time., Comment: 11 pages, 9 figures

We introduce a generalization of the Fredkin spin chain with tunable three-body interactions expressed in terms of conventional spin-half operators. Of the model's two free parameters, one controls the preference for Ising antiferromagnetism and the other controls the strength of quantum fluctuations. In this formulation, the so-called $t$-deformed model (an exactly solvable, frustration-free Hamiltonian) lives on a unit circle centered on the origin of the phase diagram. The circle demarcates the boundary between ferromagnetic order inside and various antiferromagnetic phases outside. Throughout most of the non-ferromagnetic parts of the phase diagram, the ground state has Dyck word form: i.e., all contributing spin configurations exhibit perfect matching and nesting of spin up and spin down. The exceptions are two regions in which Dyck word mismatches are energetically favorable. We remark that in those regions the energy level spacing can be exponentially small in the system size. It is also the case that exact diagonalization reveals a highly idiosyncratic energy spectrum, presumably because the hard spin twist at the chain ends induces strong incommensurability effects on the bulk system when the chain length is small. As a convergence check, we benchmark our DMRG results to near-double-precision floating-point accuracy against analytical results at exactly solvable points and against exact diagonalization results for small system sizes across the entire parameter space., Comment: 13 pages, 8 figures, 4 tables; minor edits to match the published version

The structural dynamics of a biopolymer is governed by a process of diffusion through its conformational energy landscape. In pulling experiments using optical tweezers, features of the energy landscape can be extracted from the probability distribution of the critical force at which the polymer unfolds. The analysis is often based on rate equations having Bell-Evans form, although it is understood that this modeling is inadequate and leads to unreliable landscape parameters in many common situations. Dudko and co-workers [Phys. Rev. Lett. 96, 108101 (2006)] have emphasized this critique and proposed an alternative form that includes an additional shape parameter (and that reduces to Bell-Evans as a special case). Their fitting function, however, is pathological in the tail end of the pulling force distribution, which presents problems of its own. We propose a modified closed-form expression for the distribution of critical forces that correctly incorporates the next-order correction in pulling force and is everywhere well behaved. Our claim is that this new expression provides superior parameter extraction and is valid even up to intermediate pulling rates. We present results based on simulated data that confirm its utility., Comment: 8 pages, 7 figures; v2 includes minor edits to match the published version

We address the problem of free fermions interacting with frozen gauge fields. In particular, we consider a tight-binding model of fermions on the square lattice in which (i) flux 0 or $\pi$ is threaded through each plaquette and (ii) each nearest-neighbor link is decorated with an Ising degree of freedom that describes the local modulation of the hopping amplitude. Following the standard Ruderman--Kittel--Kasuya--Yosida (RKKY) approach, we compute an effective spin model in the coupling strength order by order. Unlike the original RRKY result for site-centered SU(2) spins in which the leading contribution is an effective exchange term at the second-order, perturbation theory in link-centered Z$_2$ case produces a first-order term that favors a collective ferromagnetic moment. If, by some means, an antiferromagnetic configuration can be stabilized, the energetics of ground state is controlled by an effective Ising interaction acting pairwise at the long range across the system., Comment: 12 pages, 7 figures and 1 table. Correct typos and grammars

The Fredkin model describes a spin-half chain segment subject to three-body, correlated-exchange interactions and twisted boundary conditions. The model is frustration-free, and its ground state wave function is known exactly. Its low-energy physics is that of a strong xy ferromagnet with gapless excitations and an unusually large dynamical exponent. We study a generalized spin chain model that includes the Fredkin model as a special tuning point and otherwise interpolates between the conventional ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic quantum Heisenberg models. We solve for the low-lying states, using exact diagonalization and density-matrix renormalization group calculations, in order to track the properties of the system as it is tuned away from the Fredkin point; we also present exact analytical results that hold right at the Fredkin point. We identify a zero-temperature phase diagram with multiple transitions and unexpected ordered phases. The Fredkin ground state turns out to be particularly brittle, unstable to even infinitesimal antiferromagnetic frustration. We remark on the existence of an "anti-Fredkin" point at which all the contributing spin configurations have a spin structure exactly opposite to those in the Fredkin ground state., Comment: 11 pages, 14 figures; new simulations and analysis of the gap scaling; matches the published version

The strange correlator [Phys. Rev. Lett. 112, 247202 (2014)] has been proposed as a measure of symmetry protected topological order in one- and two-dimensional systems. It takes the form of a spin-spin correlation function, computed as a mixed overlap between the state of interest and a trivial local product state. We demonstrate that it can be computed exactly (asymptotically, in the Monte Carlo sense) for various Affleck-Kennedy-Lieb-Tasaki states by direct evaluation of the wave function within the valence bond loop gas framework. We present results for lattices with chain, square, honeycomb, cube, diamond, and hyperhoneycomb geometries. In each case, the spin quantum number S is varied such that 2S (the number of valence bonds emerging from each site) achieves various integer multiples of the lattice coordination number. We introduce the concept of strange correlator loop winding number and point to its utility in testing for the presence of symmetry protected topological order., Comment: 17 pages and 17 figures, including appendices (the text of v3 mirrors the published version)

Interaction-driven topological phase transitions in Dirac semimetals are investigated by means of large-scale quantum Monte Carlo (QMC) simulations. The interaction among Dirac fermions is introduced by coupling them to Ising spins that realize the quantum dynamics of the two-dimensional transverse field Ising model. The ground state phase diagram, in which the tuning parameters are the transverse field and the coupling between fermion and Ising spins, is determined. At weak and intermediate coupling, a second-order Ising quantum phase transition and a first-order topological phase transition between two topologically distinct Dirac semimetals are observed. Interestingly, at the latter, the Dirac points smear out to form nodal lines in the Brillouin zone, and collective bosonic fluctuations with SO(4) symmetry are strongly enhanced. At strong coupling, these two phase boundaries merge into a first-order transition., Comment: 5 pages, 6 figures

We show that the particular distribution of mass deposited on the surface of a nanomechanical resonator can be estimated by tracking the evolution of the device's resonance frequencies during the process of desorption. The technique, which relies on analytical models we have developed for the multimodal response of the system, enables mass sensing at much higher levels of accuracy than is typically achieved with a single frequency-shift measurement and no rigorous knowledge of the mass profile. We report on a series of demonstration experiments, in which the explosive molecule 1,3,5-trinitroperhydro-1,3,5-triazine (RDX) is vapor deposited along the length of a silicon nitride nanostring to create a dense, random covering of RDX crystallites on the surface. In some cases, the deposition is biased to produce distributions with a slight excess or deficit of mass at the string midpoint. The added mass is then allowed to sublimate away under vacuum conditions, with the device returning to its original state over about 4 h (and the resonance frequencies, measured via optical interferometry, relaxing back to their pre-mass-deposition values). Our claim is that the detailed time trace of observed frequency shifts is rich in information---not only about the quantity of RDX initially deposited but also about its spatial arrangement along the nanostring. The data also reveal that sublimation in this case follows a nontrivial rate law, consistent with mass loss occurring at the exposed surface area of the RDX crystallites., Comment: 10 pages, 4 figures, 2 tables

We construct a family of short-range resonating-valence-bond wave functions on a layered cubic lattice, allowing for a tunable anisotropy in the amplitudes assigned to nearest-neighbour valence bonds along one axis. Monte Carlo simulations reveal that four phases are stabilized over the full range of the anisotropy parameter. They are separated from one another by a sequence of continuous quantum phase transitions. An antiferromagnetic phase, centred on the perfect isotropy point, intervenes between two distinct quantum spin liquid states. One of them is continuously deformable to the two-dimensional U(1) spin liquid, which is known to exhibit critical bond correlations. The other has both spin and bond correlations that decay exponentially. The existence of this second phase is proof that, contrary to expectations, neither a bipartite lattice structure nor a conventional Marshall sign rule is an impediment to realizing a fully gapped quantum spin liquid., Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures

We present variational results for the ground state of the antiferromagnetic quantum Heisenberg model with frustrating next-nearest-neighbour interactions. The trial wave functions employed are of resonating-valence-bond type, elaborated to account for various geometric motifs of adjacent bond pairs. The calculation is specialized to a square-lattice cluster consisting of just sixteen sites, large enough that the system can accommodate nontrivial singlet dimer correlations but small enough that exhaustive enumeration of states in the total spin zero sector is still feasible. A symbolic computation approach allows us to generate an algebraic expression for the expectation value of any observable and hence to carry out the energy optimization exactly. While we have no measurements that could unambiguously identify a spin liquid state in the controversial region at intermediate frustration, we can say that the bond-bond correlation factors that emerge do not appear to be consistent with the existence of a columnar valence bond crystal. Furthermore, our results suggest that the magnetically disordered region may accommodate two distinct phases., Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures

We provide a detailed description of a general procedure by which a nano/micro-mechanical resonator can be calibrated using its thermal motion. A brief introduction to the equations of motion for such a resonator is presented, followed by a detailed derivation of the corresponding power spectral density (PSD) function. The effective masses for a number of different resonator geometries are determined using both finite element method (FEM) modeling and analytical calculations., Comment: 18 pages, 8 figures, 12 tables

We construct energy-optimized resonating valence bond wavefunctions as a means to sketch out the zero-temperature phase diagram of the square-lattice quantum Heisenberg model with competing nearest- (J1) and next-nearest-neighbour (J2) interactions. Our emphasis is not on achieving an accurate representation of the magnetically disordered intermediate phase (centred on a relative coupling g = J2/J1 ~ 1/2 and whose exact nature is still controversial) but on exploring whether and how the Marshall sign structure breaks down in the vicinity of the phase boundaries. Numerical evaluation of two- and four-spin correlation functions is carried out stochastically using a worm algorithm that has been modified to operate in either of two modes: one in which the sublattice labelling is fixed beforehand and another in which the worm manipulates the current labelling so as to sample various sign conventions. Our results suggest that the disordered phase evolves continuously out of the (pi,pi) Neel phase and largely inherits its Marshall sign structure; on the other hand, the transition from the magnetically ordered (pi,0) phase is strongly first order and involves an abrupt change in the sign structure and spatial symmetry as the results of a level crossing., Comment: 14 pages, 10 figures, 1 table. In Press

Low-mass, high-Q, silicon nitride nanostrings are at the cutting edge of nanomechanical devices for sensing applications. Here we show that the addition of a chemically functionalizable gold overlayer does not adversely affect the Q of the fundamental out-of-plane mode. Instead the device retains its mechanical responsiveness while gaining sensitivity to molecular bonding. Furthermore, differences in thermal expansion within the bilayer give rise to internal stresses that can be electrically controlled. In particular, an alternating current excites resonant motion of the nanostring. This AC thermoelastic actuation is simple, robust, and provides an integrated approach to sensor actuation., Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures + supplementary material

The superconducting pairing instability---as determined by a divergence of the two-particle susceptibility---is obtained in the mean field (BCS) approximation in the thermodynamic limit. The usual practice is to examine this property for a finite lattice. We illustrate that, while the conclusions remain unchanged, the technical features are very different in the thermodynamic limit and conform more closely with the usual treatment of phase transitions encountered in, for example, the mean-field paramagnetic-ferromagnetic transition. Furthermore, by going to the extreme dilute limit, one can distinguish three dimensions from one and two dimensions, in which a pairing instability occurs even for two particles., Comment: 4 pages + references, 4 figures

High-stress silicon nitride nanostrings are a promising system for sensing applications because of their ultra-high mechanical quality factors (Qs). By performing thermomechanical calibration across multiple vibrational modes, we are able to assess the roles of the various dissipation mechanisms in these devices. Specifically, we possess a set of nanostrings in which all measured modes fall upon a single curve of peak displacement versus frequency. This allows us to rule out bulk bending and intrinsic loss mechanisms as dominant sources of dissipation and to conclude that the most significant contribution to dissipation in high-stress nanostrings occurs at the anchor points., Comment: 4 pages (+3 supplementary), 3 figures, accepted to Applied Physics Letters

Inspired by recent experiments on 3He films between one and two atoms thick, we consider a bilayer Hubbard model on a triangular lattice. Our results are obtained in the framework of a cluster dynamical mean-field calculation with a quantum Monte Carlo impurity solver. For appropriate model parameters, we observe an enhancement of the effective mass as the first layer approaches integer filling and the second remains only partially filled. At finite temperatures, this increase of the effective mass -- or, equivalently, the decrease of the coherence temperature -- leads to a crossover to a state where the first layer fermions localize, drop out of the Luttinger volume, and generate essentially free local moments. This finite temperature behavior is shown to be robust against the cluster size above some critical temperature. The zero temperature phase diagram, however, depends on the cluster topology. In particular, for clusters with an even number of unit cells, the growth of the effective mass is cut off by a first-order, orbital-selective Mott transition., Comment: 8 pages, 9 figures

Inspired by recent experiments on bilayer 3He, we consider a bilayer Hubbard model on a triangular lattice. For appropriate model parameters, we observe a band-selective Mott transition at a critical chemical potential, mu_c, corresponding to the solidification of the fermions in the first layer. The growth of the effective mass on the metallic side (mu < mu_c) is cut off by a first order transition in which the first layer fermions drop out of the Luttinger volume and their spin degrees of freedom become locked in a spin singlet state. These results are obtained from a cluster dynamical mean-field calculation on an eight-site cluster with a quantum Monte Carlo cluster solver., Comment: 4 + epsilon pages, 6 figures

A quantum phase transition is typically induced by tuning an external parameter that appears as a coupling constant in the Hamiltonian. Another route is to vary the global symmetry of the system, generalizing, e.g., SU(2) to SU(N). In that case, however, the discrete nature of the control parameter prevents one from identifying and characterizing the transition. We show how this limitation can be overcome for the SU(N) Heisenberg model with the help of a singlet projector algorithm that can treat N continuously. On the square lattice, we find a direct, continuous phase transition between Neel-ordered and crystalline bond-ordered phases at Nc=4.57(5) with critical exponents z=1 and beta/nu=0.81(3)., Comment: 7 pages, 7 figures

We report the results of dynamical mean field calculations for the metallic Kondo lattice model subject to an applied magnetic field. High-quality spectral functions reveal that the picture of rigid, hybridized bands, Zeeman-shifted in proportion to the field strength, is qualitatively correct. We find evidence of a zero-temperature magnetization plateau, whose onset coincides with the chemical potential entering the spin up hybridization gap. The plateau appears at the field scale predicted by (static) large-N mean field theory and has a magnetization value consistent with that of x=1-n_c spin-polarized heavy holes, where n_c < 1 is the conduction band filling of the noninteracting system. We argue that the emergence of the plateau at low temperature marks the onset of quasiparticle coherence., Comment: 8 pages, 6 figures

Quantum Monte Carlo methods are sophisticated numerical techniques for simulating interacting quantum systems. In some cases, however, they suffer from the notorious "sign problem" and become too inefficient to be useful. A recent publication [J. Wojtkiewicz, Phys. Rev. B 75, 174421 (2007)] claims to have solved the sign problem for a certain class of frustrated quantum spin systems through the use of a bipartite valence bond basis. We show in this Comment that the apparent positivity of the path integral is due to a misconception about the resolution of the identity operator in this basis, and that consequently the sign problem remains a severe obstacle for the simulation of frustrated quantum magnets., Comment: 2 pages

We investigate the evolution of the heavy fermion ground state under application of a strong external magnetic field. We present a richer version of the usual hybridization mean field theory that allows for hybridization in both the singlet and triplet channels and incorporates a self-consistent Weiss field. We show that for a magnetic field strength B*, a filling-dependent fraction of the zero-field hybridization gap, the spin up quasiparticle band becomes fully polarized--an event marked by a sudden jump in the magnetic susceptibility. The system exhibits a kind of quantum rigidity in which the susceptibility (and several other physical observables) are insensitive to further increases in field strength. This behavior ends abruptly with the collapse of the hybridization order parameter in a first-order transition to the normal metallic state. We argue that the feature at B* corresponds to the "metamagnetic transition" in YbRh2Si2. Our results are in good agreement with recent experimental measurements., Comment: 9+ pages, 5 figures. Final version

The Heisenberg chain with antiferromagnetic, powerlaw exchange has a quantum phase transition separating spin liquid and Neel ordered phases at a critical value of the powerlaw exponent alpha. The behaviour of the system can be explained rather simply in terms of a resonating valence bond state in which the amplitude for a bond of length r goes as r^{-alpha} for alpha < 1, as r^{-(1+alpha)/2} for 1 < alpha < 3, and as r^{-2} for alpha > 3. Numerical evaluation of the staggered magnetic moment and Binder cumulant reveals a second order transition at alpha_c = 2.18(5), in excellent agreement with quantum Monte Carlo. The divergence of the magnetic correlation length is consistent with an exponent nu = 2/(3-alpha_c) = 2.4(2)., Comment: 4 pages, 6 figures

We describe a "master equation" analysis for the bond amplitudes h(r) of an RVB wavefunction. Starting from any initial guess, h(r) evolves (in a manner dictated by the spin hamiltonian under consideration) toward a steady-state distribution representing an approximation to the true ground state. Unknown transition coefficients in the master equation are treated as variational parameters. We illustrate the method by applying it to the J1-J2 antiferromagnetic Heisenberg model. Without frustration (J2=0), the amplitudes are radially symmetric and fall off as 1/r^3 in the bond length. As the frustration increases, there are precursor signs of columnar or plaquette VBS order: the bonds preferentially align along the axes of the square lattice and weight accrues in the nearest-neighbour bond amplitudes. The Marshall sign rule holds over a large range of couplings, J2/J1 < 0.418. It fails when the r=(2,1) bond amplitude first goes negative, a point also marked by a cusp in the ground state energy. A nonrigourous extrapolation of the staggered magnetic moment (through this point of nonanalyticity) shows it vanishing continuously at a critical value J2/J1 = 0.447. This may be preempted by a first-order transition to a state of broken translational symmetry., Comment: 8 pages, 7 figures

We present a valence bond theory of the spin-S quantum Heisenberg model. For nonfrustracting, local exchange and dimension d > 1, it predicts a resonating ground state with bond amplitudes h(r) ~ (a^2+r^2)^(-p/2) and decay exponent p=d+1. Different values of p can be achieved by introducing frustrating (p > d+1) or nonfrustrating (p < d+1) long-range interactions. For d=2, but not d=3, there is a critical value of the decay exponent p_c above which the ground state is a spin liquid. The phase transition is analogous to quantum percolation, with fractal valence bond loops playing the role of percolating clusters. The critical exponents are continuously tunable along the phase boundary p=p_c(a,S)., Comment: 4 + epsilon pages, 3 figures

We discuss a projector Monte Carlo method for quantum spin models formulated in the valence bond basis, using the S=1/2 Heisenberg antiferromagnet as an example. Its singlet ground state can be projected out of an arbitrary basis state as the trial state, but a more rapid convergence can be obtained using a good variational state. As an alternative to first carrying out a time consuming variational Monte Carlo calculation, we show that a very good trial state can be generated in an iterative fashion in the course of the simulation itself. We also show how the properties of the valence bond basis enable calculations of quantities that are difficult to obtain with the standard basis of Sz eigenstates. In particular, we discuss quantities involving finite-momentum states in the triplet sector, such as the dispersion relation and the spectral weight of the lowest triplet., Comment: 15 pages, 7 figures, for the proceedings of "Computer Simulation Studies in Condensed Matter Physics XX"

We report on a valence bond projector Monte Carlo simulation of the cubic lattice quantum Heisenberg model with additional higher-order exchange interactions in each unit cell. The model supports two different valence bond solid ground states. In one of these states, the dimer pattern is a three-dimensional analogue of the columnar pattern familiar from two dimensions. In the other, the dimers are regularly arranged along the four main diagonals in 1/8 of the unit cells. The phases are separated from one other and from a Neel phase by strongly first order boundaries. Our results strengthen the case for exotic transitions in two dimensions, where no discontinuities have been detected at the Heisenberg Neel-VBS transition driven by four-spin plaquet interactions., Comment: 4 pages, 5 figures

In a system with an even number of SU(2) spins, there is an overcomplete set of states--consisting of all possible pairings of the spins into valence bonds--that spans the S=0 Hilbert subspace. Operator expectation values in this basis are related to the properties of the closed loops that are formed by the overlap of valence bond states. We construct a generating function for spin correlation functions of arbitrary order and show that all nonvanishing contributions arise from configurations that are topologically irreducible. We derive explicit formulas for the correlation functions at second, fourth, and sixth order. We then extend the valence bond basis to include triplet bonds and discuss how to compute properties that are related to operators acting outside the singlet sector. These results are relevant to analytical calculations and to numerical valence bond simulations using quantum Monte Carlo, variational wavefunctions, or exact diagonalization., Comment: 22 pages, 14 figures

We report a comprehensive infrared magneto-spectroscopy study of CeRu$_4$Sb$_{12}$ compound revealing quasiparticles with heavy effective mass m$^*$, with a detailed analysis of optical constants in fields up to 17 T. We find that the applied magnetic field strongly affects the low energy excitations in the system. In particular, the magnitude of m$^*$ $\simeq$ 70 m$_b$ (m$_b$ is the quasiparticle band mass) at 10 K is suppressed by as much as 25 % at 17 T. This effect is in quantitative agreement with the mean-field solution of the periodic Anderson model augmented with a Zeeman term.

A Zeeman field affects the metallic heavy fermion ground state in two ways: (i) it splits the spin-degerenate conduction sea, leaving spin up and spin down Fermi surfaces with different band curvature; (ii) it competes with the Kondo effect and thus suppresses the mass enhancement. Taking these two effects into account, we compute the quasiparticle effective mass as a function of applied field strength within hybridization mean field theory. We also derive an expression for the optical conductivity, which is relevant to infrared spectroscopy measurements., Comment: 8 pages, 3 figures

We use quantum Monte Carlo (stochastic series expansion) and finite-size scaling to study the quantum critical points of two S=1/2 Heisenberg antiferromagnets in two dimensions: a bilayer and a Kondo-lattice-like system (incomplete bilayer), each with intra- and inter-plane couplings J and J_perp. We discuss the ground-state finite-size scaling properties of three different quantities--the Binder moment ratio, the spin stiffness, and the long-wavelength magnetic susceptibility--which we use to extract the critical value of the coupling ratio g=J_perp/J. The individual estimates of g_c are consistent provided that subleading finite-size corrections are properly taken into account. In the case of the complete bilayer, the Binder ratio leads to the most precise estimate of the critical coupling, although the subleading finite-size corrections to the stiffness are considerably smaller. For the incomplete bilayer, the subleading corrections to the stiffness are extremely small, and this quantity then gives the best estimate of the critical point. Contrary to predictions, we do not find a universal prefactor of the 1/L spin stiffness scaling at the critical point, whereas the Binder ratio is consistent with a universal value. Our results for the critical coupling ratios are g_c=2.52181(3) (full bilayer) and g_c=1.38882(2) (incomplete bilayer), which represent improvements of two orders of magnitude relative to the previous best estimates. For the correlation length exponent we obtain nu = 0.7106(9), consistent with the expected 3D Heisenberg universality class., Comment: 10 pages, 10 figures

We discuss the effect of site dilution on both the magnetization and the density of states of quantum spins in the honeycomb lattice, described by the antiferromagnetic Heisenberg spin-S model. For this purpose a real-space Bogoliubov-Valatin transformation is used. In this work we show that for the S>1/2 the system can be analyzed in terms of linear spin wave theory. For spin S=1/2, however, the linear spin wave approximation breaks down. In this case, we have studied the effect of dilution on the staggered magnetization using the Stochastic Series Expansion Monte Carlo method. Two main results are to be stressed from the Monte Carlo method: (i) a better value for the staggered magnetization of the undiluted system, m=0.2677(6); (ii) a finite value of the staggered magnetization of the percolating cluster at the classical percolation threshold, showing that there is no quantum critical transition driven by dilution in the Heisenberg model. In the solution of the problem using linear the spin wave method we pay special attention to the presence of zero energy modes. Using a combination of linear spin wave analysis and the recursion method we were able to obtain the thermodynamic limit behavior of the density of states for both the square and the honeycomb lattices. We have used both the staggered magnetization and the density of states to analyze neutron scattering experiments and Neel temperature measurements on quasi-two- -dimensional honeycomb systems. Our results are in quantitative agreement with experimental results on Mn_pZn_{1-p}PS_3 and on the Ba(Ni_pMg_{1-p})_2V_2O_8., Comment: 21 pages (REVTEX), 16 figures

A recent paper [Burovski et al., cond-mat/0507352] reports on a new, high-accuracy simulation of the classical phi^4 model (in the three-dimensional XY universality class). The authors claim that a careful scaling analysis of their data gives nu = 0.6711(1) for the thermal critical exponent. If correct, this would neatly resolve the discrepancy between numerical simulations and experiments on 4He. There is reason, however, to doubt the accuracy of the result. A re-analysis of the data yields a significantly higher value of nu, one that is consistent with other Monte Carlo studies., Comment: 2 pages, 1 figure

We propose a treatment of the subleading corrections to finite-size scaling that preserves the notion of data collapse. This approach is used to extend and improve the usual Binder cumulant analysis. As a demonstration, we present results for the two- and three-dimensional classical Ising models and the two-dimensional, double-layer quantum antiferromagnet., Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures

The maximum entropy method is shown to be a special limit of the stochastic analytic continuation method introduced by Sandvik [Phys. Rev. B 57, 10287 (1998)]. We employ a mapping between the analytic continuation problem and a system of interacting classical fields. The Hamiltonian of this system is chosen such that the determination of its ground state field configuration corresponds to an unregularized inversion of the analytic continuation input data. The regularization is effected by performing a thermal average over the field configurations at a small fictitious temperature using Monte Carlo sampling. We prove that the maximum entropy method, the currently accepted state of the art, is simply the mean field limit of this fully dynamical procedure. We also describe a technical innovation: we suggest that a parallel tempering algorithm leads to better traversal of the phase space and makes it easy to identify the critical value of the regularization temperature., Comment: 10 pages, 4 figures

We outline a partial-fractions decomposition method for determining the one-particle spectral function and single-particle density of states of a correlated electronic system on a finite lattice in the non self-consistent T-matrix approximation to arbitrary numerical accuracy, and demonstrate the application of these ideas to the attractive Hubbard model. We then demonstrate the effectiveness of a finite-size scaling ansatz which allows for the extraction of quantities of interest in the thermodynamic limit from this method. In this approximation, in one or two dimensions, for any finite lattice or in the thermodynamic limit, a pseudogap is present and its energy diverges as Tc is approached from above; this is an unphysical manifestation of using an approximation that predicts a spurious phase transition in one or two dimensions. However, in three dimensions one expects the transition predicted by this approximation to represent a true continuous phase transition, and in the thermodynamic limit any pseudogap predicted by this formulation will remain finite. We have applied our method to the attractive Hubbard model on a three-dimensional simple cubic lattice, and find that for intermediate coupling a prominent pseudogap is found in the single-particle density of states, and this gap persists over a large temperature range. In addition, we also show that for weak coupling a pseudogap is also present. The pseudogap energy at the transition temperature is almost a factor of three larger than the T=0 BCS gap for intermediate coupling, whereas for weak coupling the pseudogap and BCS gap energies are essentially equal., Comment: 28 pages, 9 figures

The Kondo lattice model, augmented by a Zeeman term, serves as a useful model of a Kondo insulator in an applied magnetic field. A variational mean field analysis of this system on a square lattice, backed up by quantum Monte Carlo calculations, reveals an interesting separation of magnetic field scales. For Zeeman energy comparable to the Kondo energy, the spin gap closes and the system develops transverse staggered magnetic order. The charge gap, however, survives up to a higher hybridization energy scale, at which point the canted antiferromagnetism is suppressed and the system becomes metallic. Quantum Monte Carlo simulations support this mean field scenario. An interesting rearrangement of spectral weight with magnetic field is found., Comment: RevTex 4, 5 pages, 4 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev. Lett

We propose a fully microscopic theory of the anomalous normal state of the attractive Hubbard model in the low-density limit that accounts for propagator renormalization. Our analytical conclusions, which focus on the thermodynamic instabilities contained in the self-consistent equations associated with our formulation, have been verified by our comprehensive numerical study of the same equations. The resulting theory is found to contain no transitions at non-zero temperatures for all finite lattices, and we have confirmed, using our numerical studies, that this behaviour persists in the thermodynamic limit for low-dimensional systems., Comment: 6 pages, 2 eps format figures

We examine the role of spin twists in the formation of domain walls, often called stripes, by focusing on the spin textures found in the cluster spin glass phases of LaSrCuO and YCaBaCuO. To this end, we derive an analytic expression for the spin distortions produced by a frustrating bond, both near the core region of the bond and in the far field, and then derive an expression for interaction energies between such bonds. We critique our analytical theory by comparison to numerical solutions of this problem and find excellent agreement. By looking at collections of small numbers of such bonds localized in some region of a lattice, we demonstrate the stability of small ``clusters'' of spins, each cluster having its own orientation of its antiferromagnetic order parameter. Then, we display a domain wall corresponding to spin twists between clusters of locally ordered spins showing how spin twists can serve as a mechanism for stripe formation. Since the charges are localized in this model, we emphasize that these domain walls are produced in a situation for which no kinetic energy is present in the problem., Comment: 19 pages, revtex, 10 eps figures (2 of which (figs. 8 and 10) are colour)

This short paper summarizes a calculational method for obtaining the dynamical properties of many-body theories formulated in terms of (unrenormalized) bare propagators (and more generally, in terms of meromorphic functions, or convolutions over meromorphic functions) to a very high accuracy. We demonstrate the method by applying it to a T-matrix theory of the attractive Hubbard model in two dimensions. We expand the pair propagator using a partial fraction decomposition, and then solve for the residues and pole locations of such a decomposition using a computer algebra system to an arbitrarily high accuracy (we used MapleV and obtained these quantities to a relative error of 10^(-80)). Thus, this method allows us to bypass all inaccuracies associated with the traditional analytical continuation problem. Our results for the density of states make clear the pronounced development of a pseudogap as the temperature is lowered in this formulation of the attractive Hubbard model., Comment: 2 pages, 2 figures

We critique a Pade analytic continuation method whereby a rational polynomial function is fit to a set of input points by means of a single matrix inversion. This procedure is accomplished to an extremely high accuracy using a novel symbolic computation algorithm. As an example of this method in action we apply it to the problem of determining the spectral function of a one-particle thermal Green's function known only at a finite number of Matsubara frequencies with two example self energies drawn from the T-matrix theory of the Hubbard model. We present a systematic analysis of the effects of error in the input points on the analytic continuation, and this leads us to propose a procedure to test quantitatively the reliability of the resulting continuation, thus eliminating the black magic label frequently attached to this procedure., Comment: 11 pages, 8 eps figs, revtex format; revised version includes reference to anonymous ftp site containing example codes (MapleVr5.1 worksheets) displaying the implementation of the algorithm, including the padematinv.m library package