The low-energy theory for single-wall carbon nanotubes including Coulomb interactions is derived and analyzed. It describes two fermion chains without interchain hopping but coupled in a specific way by the interaction. The strong-coupling properties are studied by bosonization, and consequences for experiments on single armchair nanotubes are discussed.
Because of Klein tunneling, electrostatic potentials are unable to confine Dirac electrons. We show that it is possible to confine massless Dirac fermions in a monolayer graphene sheet by inhomogeneous magnetic fields. This allows one to design mesoscopic structures in graphene by magnetic barriers, e.g., quantum dots or quantum point contacts.
For a general model of a mesoscopic multilevel quantum dot, we determine the necessary conditions for the existence of an anomalous Josephson current with spontaneously broken time-reversal symmetry. They correspond to a finite spin-orbit coupling, a suitably oriented Zeeman field, and the dot being a chiral conductor. We provide analytical expressions for the anomalous supercurrent covering a wide parameter regime.
The crossover from weak to strong correlations in parabolic quantum dots at zero magnetic field is studied by numerically exact path-integral Monte Carlo simulations for up to eight electrons. By the use of a multilevel blocking algorithm, the simulations are carried out free of the fermion sign problem. We obtain a universal crossover governed only by the density parameter . For , the data are consistent with a Wigner molecule description, while, for , Fermi liquid behavior is recovered. The crossover value is surprisingly small.
We have developed a numerical approach to compute real-time path integral expressions for quantum transport problems out of equilibrium. The scheme is based on a deterministic iterative summation of the path integral for the generating function of the nonequilibrium current. Self-energies due to the leads, being nonlocal in time, are fully taken into account within a finite memory time, thereby including non-Markovian effects, and numerical results are extrapolated both to vanishing (Trotter) time discretization and to infinite memory time. This extrapolation scheme converges except at very low temperatures, and the results are then numerically exact. The method is applied to nonequilibrium transport through an Anderson dot.