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arXiv:2109.07197 · Physical review. B./Physical review. B

Charge density wave breakdown in a heterostructure with electron-phonon coupling

D. J. Jansen, Christian Jooß, Fabian Heidrich‐Meisner

Published Nov 10, 2021• 18 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Understanding the influence of vibrational degrees of freedom on transport through a heterostructure poses considerable theoretical and numerical challenges. In this work, we use the density-matrix renormalization group method together with local basis optimization to study the half-filled Holstein model in the presence of a linear potential, either isolated or coupled to tight-binding leads. In both cases, we observe a decay of charge density wave states at a sufficiently strong potential strength. Local basis optimization selects the most important linear combinations of local oscillator states to span the local phonon space. These states are referred to as optimal modes. We show that many of these local optimal modes are needed to capture the dynamics of the decay, that the most significant optimal mode on the initially occupied sites remains well described by a coherent state typical for small polarons, and that those on the initially empty sites deviate from the coherent-state form. Additionally, we compute the current through the structure in the metallic regime as a function of voltage. For small voltages, we reproduce results for the Luttinger parameters. As the voltage is increased, the effect of larger electron-phonon coupling strengths becomes prominent. Further, the most significant optimal mode remains almost unchanged when going from the ground state to the current-carrying state in the metallic regime.

DOI
10.1103/physrevb.104.195116

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Understanding the influence of vibrational degrees of freedom on transport through a heterostructure poses considerable theoretical and numerical challenges. In this work, we use the density-matrix renormalization group method together with local basis optimization to study the half-filled Holstein model in the presence of a linear potential, either isolated or coupled to tight-binding leads. In both cases, we observe a decay of charge density wave states at a sufficiently strong potential strength. Local basis optimization selects the most important linear combinations of local oscillator states to span the local phonon space. These states are referred to as optimal modes. We show that many of these local optimal modes are needed to capture the dynamics of the decay, that the most significant optimal mode on the initially occupied sites remains well described by a coherent state typical for small polarons, and that those on the initially empty sites deviate from the coherent-state form. Additionally, we compute the current through the structure in the metallic regime as a function of voltage. For small voltages, we reproduce results for the Luttinger parameters. As the voltage is increased, the effect of larger electron-phonon coupling strengths becomes prominent. Further, the most significant optimal mode remains almost unchanged when going from the ground state to the current-carrying state in the metallic regime.
We study the Holstein model of spinless fermions, which at half filling exhibits a quantum phase transition from a metallic Tomonaga-Luttinger liquid phase to an insulating charge-density-wave (CDW) phase at a critical electron-phonon coupling strength. In our work, we focus on the real-time evolution starting from two different types of initial states that are CDW ordered: (i) ideal CDW states with and without additional phonons in the system and (ii) correlated ground states in the CDW phase. We identify the mechanism for CDW melting in the ensuing real-time dynamics and show that it strongly depends on the type of initial state. We focus on the far-from-equilibrium regime and emphasize the role of electron-phonon coupling rather than dominant electronic correlations, thus complementing a previous study of photoinduced CDW melting [H. Hashimoto and S. Ishihara, Phys. Rev. B 96, 035154 (2017)]. The numerical simulations are performed by means of matrix-product-state based methods with a local basis optimization (LBO). Within these techniques, one rotates the local (bosonic) Hilbert spaces adaptively into an optimized basis that can then be truncated while still maintaining a high precision. In this work, we extend the time-evolving block decimation (TEBD) algorithm with LBO, previously applied to single-polaron dynamics, to a half-filled system. We demonstrate that in some parameter regimes, a conventional TEBD method without LBO would fail. Furthermore, we introduce and use a ground-state density-matrix renormalization group method for electron-phonon systems using local basis optimization. In our examples, we account for up to Mph=40{M}_{\mathrm{ph}}=40Mph​=40 bare phonons per site by working with O(10)O(10)O(10) optimal phonon modes.
In this thesis, I investigate the transport and dynamical properties of electron-phonon coupled systems using numerical methods. I focus on the one-dimensional Holstein model, which incorporates both polaron and charge density wave (CDW) physics, and use matrix-product-state-based algorithms. In the first part, I present work where we combine purification with local basis optimization to study the finite-temperature properties of the model. This gives access to polaron spectral functions, polaron and bipolaron optical conductivity, and the energy-transport coefficient at finite filling. The second part focuses on the Holstein model coupled to two tight-binding leads. There, we investigate how current is transported through the structure and how CDW states break down. In the last part, we analyze the spread of an electron in a lattice and the decay of CDWs. We aim to understand if a full quantum mechanical treatment of the phonons is necessary or if trajectory-based algorithms are applicable.
In this dissertation a newly developed numerical method is presented, which is optimized for the time evolution of one-dimensional lattice systems with large local Hilbert spaces. This method extends the time-evolving block-decimation (TEBD) to include a local basis optimization (LBO), which has already been successfully combined with ground state methods. The algorithm is based on matrix product states (MPS), which can represent the quantum state of a one-dimensional chain in most cases with a number of parameters, that is not exponentially increasing with the chain length. The LBO causes a reduction of the simulation times that is linear in the bond dimension of the MPS. To demonstrate the advantages of this method, we apply the TEBD-LBO to electron-phonon (e-p) systems. In this thesis these are described by the Holstein model, which goes beyond semi-classical approximations and covers the full quantum statistics of the phonons. The understanding of the nonequilibrium dynamics of charge carriers coupled to lattice vibrations is of great importance for research areas like transport through quasi one-dimensional conductors, photo-generated phase transitions and time-resolved spectroscopy. First, the energy transfer from a highly excited electron to the phononic degrees of freedom on a small chain is studied. In the various parameter regimes different types of relaxation occur. In any case, after a certain time the system reaches a state, where on average no energy is exchanged between the electron and phonons. This can either mean a constant kinetic energy or oscillations with a constant amplitude and frequency. Next, long perfectly conducting leads without coupling to phonons were attached on both sides of the small chain. In the left lead an electron with density distribution in the shape of a Gaussian wave packet is injected with momentum towards the e-p coupled structure in the middle. This structure acts as an impurity in an otherwise perfectly conducting chain. The investigation shows resonance effects in the transmission and reflection at this impurity. Further, the electron can transfer a part of its energy permanently to the phonons, which results in a reduction of the velocity. Finally, two mechanisms are presented that lead to self-trapping of the electron on the e-p coupled structure.
We use determinant quantum Monte Carlo to study the half-filled `bond-Holstein' model on a square lattice. We find that the model exhibits a charge-density-wave (CDW) phase transition with a critical temperature TcdwT_\mathrm{cdw}Tcdw​ considerably higher than that of the canonical `site-Holstein' model. Using a finite-size scaling analysis of the charge structure factor ScdwS_{\rm cdw}Scdw​, we obtain TcdwT_\mathrm{cdw}Tcdw​ to greater than one percent accuracy. At the same time, local observables also show clear signatures consistent with the transition temperatures inferred from our scaling analysis. We attribute the enhanced CDW tendencies to a phonon-mediated nearest-neighbor electron repulsion that is directly proportional to the dimensionless electron-phonon coupling λλλ in the atomic (t→0t\rightarrow 0t→0) limit. This behavior contrasts with the site-Holstein case, where the same limit yields only an on-site attraction. We supplement our analysis with results from several unsupervised machine learning methods, which not only confirm our estimates of TcdwT_\mathrm{cdw}Tcdw​ but also provide insight into the high-temperature crossover between a metallic and bipolaron liquid regime.
We analyze the global ground-state (quantum) phase diagram of the one-dimensional spinful Holstein model at half filling as a function of the strength of the electron-phonon coupling (represented by the strength of the phonon-induced attraction, UUU) and the phonon frequency ${\ensuremath{\omega}}_{0}$. In addition to reanalyzing the various asymptotic regimes, we carry out density-matrix renormalization group simulations to correct previous inferences concerning the antiadiabatic (large ${\ensuremath{\omega}}_{0}$) and strong-coupling (large UUU) regimes. There are two distinct phases---a fully gapped commensurate charge-density-wave phase and a spin-gapped Luther-Emery phase with a gapless charge mode---separated by a phase boundary, with a shape that reflects different microscopic physics in the weak- and strong-coupling limits.
Electron-phonon interactions play a key role in many branches of solid-state physics. Here, our focus is on the transport properties of one-dimensional systems, and we apply efficient real-time matrix-product state methods to compute the optical and thermal conductivities of Holstein chains at finite temperatures and filling. We validate our approach by comparison with analytical results applicable to single polarons valid in the small polaron limit. Our work provides a systematic study of contributions to the thermal conductivity at finite frequencies and elucidates differences in the spectrum compared to the optical conductivity, covering both the Luttinger-liquid and charge-density-wave regimes. Finally, we demonstrate that our approach is capable of extracting the DC conductivities as well. Beyond this first application, several future extensions seem feasible, such as the inclusion of dispersive phonons, different types of local electron-phonon coupling, and a systematic study of drag effects in this electron-phonon coupled system.