The symmetries that protect massless Dirac fermions from a gap opening may become ineffective if the Dirac equation is discretized in space and time, either because of scattering between multiple... Show moreThe symmetries that protect massless Dirac fermions from a gap opening may become ineffective if the Dirac equation is discretized in space and time, either because of scattering between multiple Dirac cones in the Brillouin zone (fermion doubling) or because of singularities at zone boundaries. Here an implementation of Dirac fermions on a space-time lattice that removes both obstructions is introduced. The quasi-energy band structure has a tangent dispersion with a single Dirac cone that cannot be gapped without breaking both time-reversal and chiral symmetries. It is shown that this topological protection is absent in the familiar single-cone discretization with a linear sawtooth dispersion, as a consequence of the fact that there the time-evolution operator is discontinuous at Brillouin zone boundaries. Show less
Massless Dirac fermions in an electric field propagate along the field lines without backscattering, due to the combination of spin-momentum locking and spin conservation. This phenomenon, known as... Show moreMassless Dirac fermions in an electric field propagate along the field lines without backscattering, due to the combination of spin-momentum locking and spin conservation. This phenomenon, known as 'Klein tunneling', may be lost if the Dirac equation is discretized in space and time, because of scattering between multiple Dirac cones in the Brillouin zone. To avoid this, a staggered space-time lattice discretization has been developed in the literature, with one single Dirac cone in the Brillouin zone of the original square lattice. Here we show that the staggering doubles the size of the Brillouin zone, which actually contains two Dirac cones. We find that this fermion doubling causes a spurious breakdown of Klein tunneling, which can be avoided by an alternative single-cone discretization scheme based on a split-operator approach. Show less
We calculate the spectral statistics of the Kramers-Weyl Hamiltonian H = v n-ary sumation ( alpha ) sigma ( alpha ) sin p ( alpha ) + t sigma (0) n-ary sumation ( alpha )cos p ( alpha ) in a... Show moreWe calculate the spectral statistics of the Kramers-Weyl Hamiltonian H = v n-ary sumation ( alpha ) sigma ( alpha ) sin p ( alpha ) + t sigma (0) n-ary sumation ( alpha )cos p ( alpha ) in a chaotic quantum dot. The Hamiltonian has symplectic time-reversal symmetry (H is invariant when spin sigma ( alpha ) and momentum p ( alpha ) both change sign), and yet for small t the level spacing distributionP(s) proportional to s ( beta ) follows the beta = 1 orthogonal ensemble instead of the beta = 4 symplectic ensemble. We identify a supercell symmetry of H that explains this finding. The supercell symmetry is broken by the spin-independent hopping energy proportional to t cos p, which induces a transition from beta = 1 to beta = 4 statistics that shows up in the conductance as a transition from weak localization to weak antilocalization. Show less
The spatial discretization of the single-cone Dirac Hamiltonian on the surface of a topological insulator or superconductor needs a special "staggered" grid, to avoid the appearance of a spurious... Show moreThe spatial discretization of the single-cone Dirac Hamiltonian on the surface of a topological insulator or superconductor needs a special "staggered" grid, to avoid the appearance of a spurious second cone in the Brillouin zone. We adapt the Stacey discretization from lattice gauge theory to produce a generalized eigenvalue problem, of the form H psi = EP psi, with Hermitian tight-binding operators H, P, a locally conserved particle current, and preserved chiral and symplectic symmetries. This permits the study of the spectral statistics of Dirac fermions in each of the four symmetry classes A, AII, AIII, and D. Show less