This thesis is devoted to the study of strongly correlated phases of quantum matter in two spatial dimensions. In presence of strong interactions, the electron can split up into separate spin and charge degrees of freedom. The diagnosis of such fractionalized excitations in recent experiments, as well as finding new probes for their detection, comprise the two major themes of this thesis.\nThe first part of the thesis, comprising chapters 2-6, discusses the relevance of fractionalization to the pseudogap phase of the underdoped high Tc cuprate superconductors. This is motivated by transport experiments that show a violation of Luttinger's theorem, possible only in the presence of topological order that can arise naturally as a consequence of fractionalization. Chapters 2 and 3 focus on phenomenological models with bosonic charge carriers and fermionic spin carriers, and investigate transport properties as well as various confinement transitions to symmetry broken phases. Chapters 4, 5 and 6 deal with a different framework of electron fractionalization, where the charge carriers are fermionic and spin carriers are bosonic. We find that these models can better explain the thermal and electrical transport properties in chapter 5. In chapters 6 and 7, we show how such models arise naturally from quantum fluctuations of antiferromagnetism, and can simultaneously intertwine the anti-nodal spectral gap with the discrete broken symmetries that are observed in the cuprates. \nThe second part of the thesis, comprising chapters 7 and 8, proposes new experimental probes to study the behavior of insulating two dimensional quantum magnets. Aided by geometric frustration and strong quantum fluctuations, they may realize a spin liquid ground state which can be extremely difficult to detect via conventional probes. Chapter 7 discusses how novel spin-transport probes from the spintronics community can be used to detect fractionalized excitations in a quantum spin liquid. Chapter 8 studies how the temperature dependent anisotropy of in-plane versus out-of-plane thermal conductivities can serve as an explicit signature of fractionalization in layered two-dimensional materials.
This thesis is devoted to the study of strongly correlated phases of quantum matter in two spatial dimensions. In presence of strong interactions, the electron can split up into separate spin and charge degrees of freedom. The diagnosis of such fractionalized excitations in recent experiments, as well as finding new probes for their detection, comprise the two major themes of this thesis.\nThe first part of the thesis, comprising chapters 2-6, discusses the relevance of fractionalization to the pseudogap phase of the underdoped high Tc cuprate superconductors. This is motivated by transport experiments that show a violation of Luttinger's theorem, possible only in the presence of topological order that can arise naturally as a consequence of fractionalization. Chapters 2 and 3 focus on phenomenological models with bosonic charge carriers and fermionic spin carriers, and investigate transport properties as well as various confinement transitions to symmetry broken phases. Chapters 4, 5 and 6 deal with a different framework of electron fractionalization, where the charge carriers are fermionic and spin carriers are bosonic. We find that these models can better explain the thermal and electrical transport properties in chapter 5. In chapters 6 and 7, we show how such models arise naturally from quantum fluctuations of antiferromagnetism, and can simultaneously intertwine the anti-nodal spectral gap with the discrete broken symmetries that are observed in the cuprates. \nThe second part of the thesis, comprising chapters 7 and 8, proposes new experimental probes to study the behavior of insulating two dimensional quantum magnets. Aided by geometric frustration and strong quantum fluctuations, they may realize a spin liquid ground state which can be extremely difficult to detect via conventional probes. Chapter 7 discusses how novel spin-transport probes from the spintronics community can be used to detect fractionalized excitations in a quantum spin liquid. Chapter 8 studies how the temperature dependent anisotropy of in-plane versus out-of-plane thermal conductivities can serve as an explicit signature of fractionalization in layered two-dimensional materials.
The interplay among symmetry, topology and condensed matter systems has deepened our understandings of matter and lead to tremendous recent progresses in finding new topological phases of matter such as topological insulators, superconductors and semi-metals. Most examples of the aforementioned topological materials are free fermion systems, in this thesis, however, we focus on their strongly correlated counterparts where electron-electron interactions play a major role. With interactions, exotic topological phases and quantum critical points with fractionalized quantum degrees of freedom emerge. In the first part of this thesis, we study the problem of resonant tunneling through a quantum dot in a spinful Luttinger liquid. It provides the simplest example of a (0+1)d system with symmetry-protected phase transitions. We show that the problem is equivalent to a two channel SU(3) Kondo problem and can be mapped to a quantum Brownian motion model on a Kagome lattice. Utilizing boundary conformal field theory, we find the universal peak conductance and compute the scaling behavior of the resonance line-shape.\nFor the second part, we present a model of interacting Majorana fermions that describes a superconducting phase with a topological order characterized by the Fibonacci topological field theory. Our theory is based on a SO(7)1=SO(7)1/(G2)1 x (G2)1 coset construction and implemented by a solvable two-dimensional network model. In addition, we predict a closely related ''anti-Fibonacci'' phase, whose topological order is characterized by the tricritical Ising model. Finally, we propose an interferometer that generalizes the Z2 Majorana interferometer and directly probes the Fibonacci non-Abelian statistics.\nFor the third part, we argue that a correlated fluid of electrons and holes can exhibit fractional quantum Hall effects at zero magnetic field. We first show that a Chern insulator can be realized as a free fermion model with p-wave(m=1) excitonic pairing. Its ground state wavefunction is then worked out and generalized to m>1. We give several pieces of evidence that this conjectured wavefunction correctly describes a topological phase, dubbed ''fractional excitonic insulator'', within the same universality class as the corresponding Laughlin state at filling 1/m. We present physical arguments that gapless states with higher angular momentum pairing between energy bands are conducive to forming the fractional excitonic insulator in the presence of repulsive interactions. Without interactions, these gapless states appear at topological phase transitions which separate the trivial insulator from a Chern insulator with higher Chern number. Since the nonvanishing density of states at these higher angular momentum band inversion transitions can give rise to interesting many-body effects, we introduce a series of minimal lattice models realizations in two dimensions. We also study the effect of rotational symmetry broken electron-hole exciton condensation in our lattice models using mean field theory.
The physics of strongly interacting particles is often extraordinarily rich, leading to the \textit{emergence} of fundamentally new phases and phenomena that cannot exist in the absence of correlations. This thesis is devoted to the study of different classes of quantum systems with such strong correlations. Programmable quantum simulators based on Rydberg atom arrays have recently emerged as versatile platforms to probe quantum many-body phases and their dynamics. In Chapter 2, we start with theories of quantum phase transitions (QPTs) in one-dimensional chains of Rydberg atoms. We demonstrate the existence of a novel QPT in the universality class of the Z3 chiral clock model, calculate its critical exponents, and discuss their measurement with the quantum Kibble-Zurek mechanism. Proceeding to two dimensions, Chapter 3 describes the zero-temperature phase diagram of a square-lattice Rydberg atom array, revealing several experimentally realizable density-wave-ordered phases and QPTs. For a different geometry, namely, the kagome lattice studied in Chapter 4, we identify a regime that constitutes a likely candidate for hosting a phase with long-range quantum entanglement and topological order. Based on mappings to dimer models and gauge theories, we argue for the existence of a quantum spin liquid phase that has proved elusive in solid-state materials. In the next part of this thesis, we focus on similarly strongly correlated phases in the realm of quantum materials. Motivated by recent observations of an enhanced thermal Hall response in the high-temperature cuprate superconductors, in Chapter 5, we study the thermal Hall conductivity, κxy, of chiral spin-liquid ans\"{a}tze on the square lattice, focusing on the contribution from neutral (bosonic or fermionic) spinons. Thereafter, going beyond mean-field theory, we consider the corrections due to emergent gauge fields, which yield a response of opposite sign to that of the fermionic matter. We additionally consider the contribution of phonons to κxy and establish its relation to the spinon Hall viscosity. Thermal Hall measurements also leave intriguing fingerprints in Kitaev materials like α-RuCl3, and in this context, Chapter 6 investigates the unquantized κxy obtained in a gapless spinon Fermi surface state.
This thesis deals with the Hubbard model as prototypical model to describe the physics of electrons in the two-dimensional copper-oxide planes of high-Tc cuprates. To get approximate solutions, we employ functional renormalization group (fRG) and dynamical mean-field theory (DMFT) methods. We deal with the problem of identifying bosonic fluctuations in the vertex function, exhibiting an intricate dependence on momenta and frequencies already at moderate coupling. In the normal, paramagnetic phase, the goal is achieved by employing the recently introduced single-boson exchange decomposition. In the symmetry-broken phases, we reformulate the previously introduced combination of fRG with mean-field theory by explicitly introducing a bosonic field. A widely discussed and challenging problem is the emergence of a pseudogap in the Hubbard model. In this thesis we assume this phase to be characterized by strong magnetic fluctuations. Following previous works, we fractionalize the electron in a chargon, carrying the electron's charge, and a charge neutral spinon, which represents local fluctuations of the spin orientation. The chargons undergo Néel or spiral magnetic order below a density-dependent transition temperature T∗. We compute DC charge transport coefficients for the chargons, and obtain a pronounced drop in the charge carrier density across the magnetic-to-paramagnetic transition. Directional fluctuations of the spin orientation are described by a non-linear sigma model and prevent long-range ordering of the electrons at any finite temperature. The phase where the chargon degrees of freedom are magnetically ordered shares many features with the pseudogap regime observed in high-Tc cuprates: a strong reduction of the charge carrier density, a spin gap, Fermi arcs, and electronic nematicity.
Understanding the interplay between symmetries and phases lies at the heart of characterizing states of matter. The conventional Landau's paradigm associates local ordered states with symmetry breaking, but this paradigm fails to include gapped topological phases, which can only be distinguished by the global topological invariant and the present of gapless edge modes at open boundaries. In this thesis, variety of states of matter is enriched from two aspects: a new paradigm of phases that incorporates both symmetry broken phase and topological phase, and exotic topological phases that are realized in different degree of freedoms of the same system. The two aspects are explored by studying corresponding one dimensional fermionic models. Besides gapped phases, exotic quasiparticle interferences of gapless topological systems are also investigated. \n \nThe first chapter serves as a theoretical basis for the next two chapters by giving an introduction to topological phases in one dimension. In particular, a bosonization method is introduced to describe topological degeneracy and edge zero modes, which is favoured by the ability to deal with interactions as well as to uncover the phenomena of spin-charge separation. \n \nIn the second chapter a new paradigm of phases is proposed and investigated that incorporates both symmetry broken phases and symmetry-protected topological phases. Through exact-solvable models bond spin density wave(BSDW) states are proposed as candidates for this new paradigm, which are ZZ2 symmetry breaking due to spontaneous dimerization and yet each is topological nontrivial with edge zero modes of fractional fermions. More general lattice models are constructed, and it is shown that BSDW exists in a considerable regime of parameters for a family of lattice models, from both mean-field analysis and bosonization. \n \nIn the third chapter, we give an effective field description for spin-charge separated edge modes consisting of both Majorana modes and fractional fermions, and demonstrate how to harvest both simultaneously in a spinless fermionic ladder with particle-hole symmetry and single-chain fermion parity. Further, the idea of spin-charge separated edge modes is applied to reinterpret the prominent Haldane phase of spin-1 chain in its equivalent spin-frac12 fermionic model. \n \nIn contrast to the above two theoretically oriented topics that aim to add variety to topological phases, the third topic establishes a bridge between abstract concepts for topological systems to remarkable features that can be detected in experiments. The last chapter reveals how topological charges for topological Fermi points, through exhibiting exotic quasiparticle interference in the presence of impurities, could be visualized in STS measurements. \nThe generalized joint density of states(GJDOS) is applied to address effects from the geometry of band dispersion and topological charges separately. Both analytical results and numerical simulation suggest distinct and robust quasiparticle interference features as indicators for topological charges that can be accessed by FT-STS experiments.
This thesis deals with the Hubbard model as prototypical model to describe the physics of electrons in the two-dimensional copper-oxide planes of high-Tc cuprates. To get approximate solutions, we employ functional renormalization group (fRG) and dynamical mean-field theory (DMFT) methods. We deal with the problem of identifying bosonic fluctuations in the vertex function, exhibiting an intricate dependence on momenta and frequencies already at moderate coupling. In the normal, paramagnetic phase, the goal is achieved by employing the recently introduced single-boson exchange decomposition. In the symmetry-broken phases, we reformulate the previously introduced combination of fRG with mean-field theory by explicitly introducing a bosonic field. A widely discussed and challenging problem is the emergence of a pseudogap in the Hubbard model. In this thesis we assume this phase to be characterized by strong magnetic fluctuations. Following previous works, we fractionalize the electron in a chargon, carrying the electron's charge, and a charge neutral spinon, which represents local fluctuations of the spin orientation. The chargons undergo N\'eel or spiral magnetic order below a density-dependent transition temperature T∗. We compute DC charge transport coefficients for the chargons, and obtain a pronounced drop in the charge carrier density across the magnetic-to-paramagnetic transition. Directional fluctuations of the spin orientation are described by a non-linear sigma model and prevent long-range ordering of the electrons at any finite temperature. The phase where the chargon degrees of freedom are magnetically ordered shares many features with the pseudogap regime observed in high-Tc cuprates: a strong reduction of the charge carrier density, a spin gap, Fermi arcs, and electronic nematicity.
Symmetries play a central role in organizing many-body quantum phases of matter and in revealing universal low-energy behavior. Systems with gapless excitations are especially rich, as symmetries can act in intricate ways on low-energy degrees of freedom, while enhanced correlations and entanglement open possibilities not available in gapped settings. This thesis studies two settings in which symmetry considerations give rise to qualitatively new phenomena in gapless quantum matter and correlated electronic systems. In the first part of the thesis, I study how the framework developed for gapped topological phases can be generalized to gapless systems, especially those arising at topological phase transitions. I show that symmetry can refine a fixed conformal field theory universality class into distinct symmetry-enriched critical phases that cannot be smoothly connected without breaking symmetry or leaving the critical theory. In Chapter 1, I show that transitions between distinct symmetry-protected topological phases can exhibit exotic boundary critical behavior not seen in gapped systems. In Chapter 2, I show that distinct gapless symmetry-enriched phases can meet at an anomalous multicritical point. In Chapter 3, I show that spatial interfaces provide an operational indicator of these phases, and that distinct symmetry-enriched criticalities are separated by non-invertible conformal defects. Together, these results show that subtle distinctions in symmetry-enriched criticality have robust and physically detectable consequences. In the second part of the thesis, I study how symmetry and strong interactions govern charge carriers in correlated electron systems. In Chapter 4, I develop a microscopic theory of the Josephson diode effect in Josephson junctions, showing that nonreciprocal supercurrents arise universally from finite Cooper-pair momentum when time-reversal and inversion symmetry are simultaneously broken. In Chapter 5, I study spin-polaron formation in a flat-band ferromagnetic Hubbard model and show that binding occurs in a regime where the conventional mechanisms based on kinetic frustration or nontrivial band topology do not apply, but instead exotic composite charge carriers arise from quantum geometry.