Condensed Matter

Excitonic resonance and binding energies can be altered by controlling the environmental screening of the attractive Coulomb potential. Although this screening response is often assumed to be static, the time evolution of the excitonic quasiparticles manifests a frequency-dependence in its Coulomb screening efficacy. In this letter, we investigate a ground (1s) and first excited exciton state (2s) in a multi-layered transition metal dichalcogenide (MoS 2 ) upon ultrafast photo-excitation. We explore the dynamic screening effects on the latter and show its resonance frequency is the relevant frequency at which screening from the smaller-sized 1s counterparts is effective. Our finding sheds light on new avenues of external tuning on excitonic properties.

Plasmons, quantized collective oscillations of electrons, have been observed in metals and semiconductors. Such massive electrons have been the basic ingredients of research in plasmonics and optical metamaterials.1 Also, Dirac plasmons have been observed in graphene, two-dimensional electron systems and topological insulators (TIs). A nontrivial Z2 topology of the bulk valence band leads to the emergence of massless Dirac fermions on the surface in TIs.2,3 Although Dirac plasmons can be formed through additional grating or patterning, their characteristics promise novel plasmonic metamaterials that are tunable in the terahertz and mid-infrared frequency ranges.4 Recently, the Majorana fermions have been verified through various kinds of topological superconductors(TSCs). In particular, the quantized and paired spin waves have been discovered in polyaromatic hydrocarbons(PAHs)5 and Majorana hinge and corner modes have been identified in the organic crystal of PAHs. Interestingly, regularity and periodicity can serve in the xy-plane of the crystal as the patterning of TSC resonators. Here, first we report experimental evidence of Majorana plasmonic excitations in a molecular topological superconductor (MTSC). It was prepared from MTSC resonators with different stacked numbers of HYLION-12. Distributing carriers into multiple MTSC resonators enhance the plasmonic resonance frequency and magnitude, which is different from the effects in a conventional semiconductor superlattice.6,7 The direct results of the unique carrier density scaling law of the resonance of massless Majorana fermions is demonstrated. Moreover, topological surface plasmon amplification by stimulated emission of radiation (SPASER) is also firstly created from the MTSC resonator. It has two mutually time-reversed chiral surface plasmon modes carrying the opposite topological charges.

The discovery of graphene has stimulated enormous interest in two-dimensional electron gas with linear band dispersion. However, to date, 2D Dirac semimetals are still very rare due to the fact that 2D Dirac states are generally fragile against perturbations such as spin-orbit couplings. Nonsymmorphic crystal symmetries can enforce the formation of Dirac nodes, providing a new route to establishing symmetry-protected Dirac states in 2D materials. Here we report the symmetry-protected Dirac states in nonsymmorphic alpha-antimonene. The antimonene was synthesized by the method of molecular beam epitaxy. Two Dirac cones with large anisotropy were observed by angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy. The Dirac state in alpha-antimonene is of spin-orbit type in contrast to the spinless Dirac states in graphene. The result extends the 'graphene' physics into a new family of 2D materials where spin-orbit coupling is present.

We report the dependence of the magnetization dynamics in a square artificial spin-ice lattice on the in-plane magnetic field angle. Using two complementary measurement techniques - broadband ferromagnetic resonance and micro-focused Brillouin light scattering spectroscopy - we systematically study the evolution of the lattice dynamics, both for a coherent radiofrequency excitation and an incoherent thermal excitation of spin dynamics. We observe a splitting of modes facilitated by inter-element interactions that can be controlled by the external field angle and magnitude. Detailed time-dependent micromagnetic simulations reveal that the split modes are localized in different regions of the square network. This observation suggests that it is possible to disentangle modes with different spatial profiles by tuning the external field configuration.

An electron is usually considered to have only one type of kinetic energy, but could it have more, for its spin and charge, or by exciting other electrons? In one dimension (1D), the physics of interacting electrons is captured well at low energies by the Tomonaga-Luttinger-Liquid (TLL) model, yet little has been observed experimentally beyond this linear regime. Here, we report on measurements of many-body modes in 1D gated-wires using a tunnelling spectroscopy technique. We observe two separate Fermi seas at high energies, associated with spin and charge excitations, together with the emergence of three additional 1D 'replica' modes that strengthen with decreasing wire length. The effective interaction strength in the wires is varied by changing the amount of 1D inter-subband screening by over 45%. Our findings demonstrate the existence of spin-charge separation in the whole energy band outside the low-energy limit of validity of the TLL model, and also set a limit on the validity of the newer nonlinear TLL theory.

A semiconducting nanowire with strong Rashba coupling and in proximity of a superconductor hosts Majorana edge modes. An array of such nanowires with inter-wire coupling gives an approximate description of a two-dimensional topological superconductor, where depending on the strength of the magnetic field and the chemical potential, a rich phase diagram hosting trivial and different types of non-trivial phases can be achieved. Here, we theoretically consider such a two-dimensional assembly of spin-orbit coupled superconducting nanowires and calculate the collective tunneling conductance between normal electrodes and the wires in the topological regime. When the number of wires in the assembly is N , as a consequence of the way the Majorana bonding and anti-bonding states form, we find that N conductance peaks symmetric about the bias V=0 appear, for even N . When N is odd, a ZBCP also appears. Such an assembly can be realized by standard nano-fabrication techniques where individual nanowires can be turned ON or OFF by using mechanical switch (or local top gating) to make N either even or odd -- thereby switching the ZBCP OFF or ON , respectively. Hence, our results can be used to realize and detect topological superconductivity efficiently, unambiguously and in a controlled manner.

The total angular momentum of a close system is a conserved quantity, which should remain constant in time for any excitation experiment once the pumping signal has extinguished. Such conservation, however, is never satisfied in practice in any real-time first principles description of the demagnetization process. Furthermore, there is a growing experimental evidence that the same takes place in experiments. The missing angular momentum is usually associated to lattice vibrations, which are not measured experimentally and are never considered in real-time simulations. Here we critically analyse the issue and conclude that current state-of-the-art simulations violate angular momentum conservation already at the electronic level of description. This shortcoming originates from an oversimplified description of the spin-orbit coupling, which includes atomic contributions but neglects completely that of itinerant electrons. We corroborate our findings with time-dependent simulations using model tight-binding Hamiltonians, and show that indeed such conservation can be re-introduced by an appropriate choice of spin-orbit coupling. The consequences of our findings on recent experiments are also discussed.

The study of nanostructures' vibrational properties is at the core of nanoscience research, they are known to represent a fingerprint of the system as well as to hint the underlying nature of chemical bonds. In this work we focus on addressing how does the vibrational density of states (VDOS) of the carbon fullerene family ( C n : n=20??20 atoms) evolves from the molecular to the bulk material (graphene) behavior using density functional theory. We found that the fullerene's VDOS smoothly converges to the graphene characteristic shape-line with the only noticeable discrepancy in the frequency range of the out-of-plane optic (ZO) phonon band in graphene. From a comparison of both systems we obtain as main results that: 1)The pentagonal faces in the fullerenes impede the existence of the analog of the high frequency graphene's ZO phonons, 2)which in the context of phonons this could be interpreted as a compression (by 43\%) of the ZO phonon band by decreasing its maximum allowed radial-optic vibration frequency. 3)As a result, the deviation of fullerene's VDOS relative to graphene should result on important thermodynamical implications. The obtained insights can be extrapolated to other structures containing pentagonal rings such as nanostructure or as pentagonal defects in graphene.

Understanding the carrier dynamics of nanostructures is the key for development and optimization of novel semiconductor nano-devices. Here, we study the optical properties and carrier dynamics of (InGa)(AsSb)/GaAs/GaP quantum dots (QDs) by means of non-resonant energy and temperature modulated time-resolved photoluminescence. Studying this material system is important in view of the ongoing implementation of such QDs for nano memory devices. Our set of structures contains a single QD layer, QDs overgrown by a GaSb capping layer, and solely a GaAs quantum well, respectively. Theoretical analytical models allow us to discern the common spectral features around the emission energy of 1.8 eV related to GaAs quantum well and GaP substrate. We observe type-I emission from QDs with recombination times between 2 ns and 10 ns, increasing towards lower energies. The distribution suggests the coexistence of momentum direct and indirect QD transitions. Moreover, based on the considerable tunability of the dots depending on Sb incorporation, we suggest their utilization as quantum photonic sources embedded in complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) platforms, since GaP is almost lattice-matched to Si. Finally, our analysis confirms the nature of the pumping power blue-shift of emission originating from the charged-background induced changes of the wavefunction topology.

The bulk polarization is a Z 2 topological invariant characterizing non-interacting systems in one dimension with chiral or particle-hole symmetries. We show that the bulk polarization can always be determined from the single-particle entanglement spectrum, even in the absence of symmetries that quantize it. In the symmetric case, the known relation between the bulk polarization and the number of virtual topological edge modes is recovered. We use the bulk polarization to compute Chern numbers in 1D and 2D, which illuminates their known relation to the entanglement spectrum. Furthermore we discuss an alternative bulk polarization that can carry more information about the surface spectrum than the conventional one and can simplify the calculation of Chern numbers.