Steady-state Peierls transition in nanotube quantum simulator

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that a nanotube quantum simulator with quantum dots can exhibit a steady-state Peierls transition, revealing charge-density wave order due to electron-phonon interactions, and introduces methods to analyze such open systems.

Contribution

It shows how a nanotube quantum simulator can realize a Peierls transition and develops numerical methods for large open electron-phonon systems.

Findings

Observation of Peierls transition into an insulating charge-density wave state.

Identification of transport signatures of electronic correlations.

Development of numerical techniques for large-scale open quantum systems.

Abstract

Quantum dots placed along a vibrating nanotube provide a quantum simulation platform that can directly address the electron-phonon interaction. This offers promising prospects for the search of new quantum materials and the study of strong correlation effects. As this platform is naturally operated by coupling the dots to an electronic reservoir, state preparation is straightforwardly achieved by driving into the steady state. Here we show that for intermediate electron-phonon coupling strength, the system with spin-polarized quantum dots undergoes a Peierls transition into an insulating regime which exhibits charge-density wave order in the steady state as a consequence of the competition between electronic Coulomb repulsive interactions and phonon-induced attractive interactions. The transport phenomena can be directly observed as fingerprints of electronic correlations. We also present powerful methods to numerically capture the physics of such an open electron-phonon system at large numbers of phonons. Our work paves the way to study and detect correlated electron-phonon physics in the nanotube quantum simulator with current experimentally accessible techniques.