Nagaoka ferromagnetism in an array of phosphorene quantum dots

Abstract

Abstract We consider an array of four quantum dots defined in phosphorene containing three excess electrons, i.e., in the conditions of near half filling when itinerant Nagaoka ferromagnetism is expected to appear in a square array with isotropic interdot hopping. The interdot hopping in the array arranged in a square inherits the anisotropy from the form of the phosphorene conduction band. We apply the configuration interaction method for discussion of the appearance and stability of the spin-polarized ground state and discuss the compensation of the effective mass anisotropy by the geometry of the quantum dot array. Our study shows strong stability of Nagaoka ferromagnetism for optimized geometry of the array, with the Nagaoka gap as large as ∼ 230 µeV. A phase diagram for the ground-state spin ordering versus the geometric parameters of the array is presented. We study the suppression of the ferromagnetism in a transition of the $$2\times 2$$ 2 × 2 array to a quasi-1D chain and indicate that the shift of one of the quantum dots away from the array center is enough to transform the system to a quantum dot chain. A shift in the zigzag crystal direction induces the low-spin ground state more effectively than a shift along the armchair direction. We also discuss the robustness of the spin ordering against detuning one of the dots. The ferromagnetic ground-state survives as long as the detuning is not large enough to trap one of the electrons within a single quantum dot (for positive detuning) or remove one of the quantum dots of the accessible energy range (for negative detuning).