Doping-Induced Quantum Spin Hall Insulator to Superconductor Transition.

A quantum spin Hall insulating state that arises from spontaneous symmetry breaking has remarkable properties: skyrmion textures of the SO(3) order parameter carry charge 2e. Doping this state of matter opens a new route to superconductivity via the condensation of skyrmions. We define a model amenable to large-scale negative sign free quantum Monte Carlo simulations that allows us to study this transition.

Phases of the (2+1) Dimensional SO(5) Nonlinear Sigma Model with Topological Term.

We use the half-filled zeroth Landau level in graphene as a regularization scheme to study the physics of the SO(5) nonlinear sigma model subject to a Wess-Zumino-Witten topological term in 2+1 dimensions. As shown by Ippoliti et al. [Phys.

Superconductivity from the condensation of topological defects in a quantum spin-Hall insulator.

The discovery of quantum spin-Hall (QSH) insulators has brought topology to the forefront of condensed matter physics. While a QSH state from spin-orbit coupling can be fully understood in terms of band theory, fascinating many-body effects are expected if it instead results from spontaneous symmetry breaking. Here, we introduce a model of interacting Dirac fermions where a QSH state is dynamically generated.

Finite-size effects in canonical and grand-canonical quantum Monte Carlo simulations for fermions.

We introduce a quantum Monte Carlo method at finite temperature for interacting fermionic models in the canonical ensemble, where the conservation of the particle number is enforced. Although general thermodynamic arguments ensure the equivalence of the canonical and the grand-canonical ensembles in the thermodynamic limit, their approach to the infinite-volume limit is distinctively different. Observables computed in the canonical ensemble generically display a finite-size correction proportional to the inverse volume, whereas in the grand-canonical ensemble the approach is exponential in the ratio of the linear size over the correlation length.