Chiral Spin Textures of Strongly Interacting Particles in Quantum Dots

Catherine J. Stevenson, Jordan Kyriakidis

Published 2010-09-09, updated 2011-03-07Version 2

We probe for statistical and Coulomb induced spin textures among the low-lying states of repulsively-interacting particles confined to potentials that are both rotationally and time-reversal invariant. In particular, we focus on two-dimensional quantum dots and employ configuration-interaction techniques to directly compute the correlated many-body eigenstates of the system. We produce spatial maps of the single-particle charge and spin density and verify the annular structure of the charge density and the rotational invariance of the spin field. We further compute two-point spin correlations to determine the correlated structure of a single component of the spin vector field. In addition, we compute three-point spin correlation functions to uncover chiral structures. We present evidence for both chiral and quasi-topological spin textures within energetically degenerate subspaces in the three- and four-particle system.