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Song, Zhida

Publications and source records attributed to Song, Zhida.

Evidence for a monolayer excitonic insulator

The interplay between topology and correlations can generate a variety of quantum phases, many of which remain to be explored. Recent advances have identified monolayer WTe 2 as a promising material for doing so in a highly tunable fashion. The ground state of this two-dimensional crystal can be electrostatically tuned from a quantum spin Hall insulator to a superconductor. However, much remains unknown about the gap-opening mechanism of the insulating state. In this work, we report evidence that the quantum spin Hall insulator is also an excitonic insulator, arising from the spontaneous formation of electron–hole bound states, namely excitons. We reveal the presence of an intrinsic insulating state at the charge neutrality point in clean samples and confirm the correlated nature of this charge-neutral insulator by tunnelling spectroscopy. We provide evidence against alternative scenarios of a band insulator or a localized insulator and support the existence of an excitonic insulator phase in the clean limit. These observations lay the foundation for understanding a new class of correlated insulators with nontrivial topology and identify monolayer WTe 2 as a promising candidate for exploring quantum phases of ground-state excitons.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

Magnetic topological quantum chemistry

For over 100 years, the group-theoretic characterization of crystalline solids has provided the foundational language for diverse problems in physics and chemistry. However, the group theory of crystals with commensurate magnetic order has remained incomplete for the past 70 years, due to the complicated symmetries of magnetic crystals. In this work, we complete the 100-year-old problem of crystalline group theory by deriving the small corepresentations, momentum stars, compatibility relations, and magnetic elementary band corepresentations of the 1,421 magnetic space groups (MSGs), which we have made freely accessible through tools on the Bilbao Crystallographic Server. We extend Topological Quantum Chemistry to the MSGs to form a complete, real-space theory of band topology in magnetic and nonmagnetic crystalline solids – Magnetic Topological Quantum Chemistry (MTQC). Using MTQC, we derive the complete set of symmetry-based indicators of electronic band topology, for which we identify symmetry-respecting bulk and anomalous surface and hinge states.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗