Geometric Stiffness in Interlayer Exciton Condensates.

Recent experiments have confirmed the presence of interlayer excitons in the ground state of transition metal dichalcogenide bilayers. The interlayer excitons are expected to show remarkable transport properties when they undergo Bose condensation. In this Letter, we demonstrate that quantum geometry of Bloch wave functions plays an important role in the phase stiffness of the interlayer exciton condensate. Notably, we identify a geometric contribution that amplifies the stiffness, leading to the formation of a robust condensate with an increased Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless temperature. Our results have direct implications for the ongoing experimental efforts on interlayer excitons in materials that have nontrivial quantum geometry. We provide estimates for the geometric contribution in transition metal dichalcogenide bilayers through a realistic continuum model with gated Coulomb interaction, and find that the substantially increased stiffness may allow an interlayer exciton condensate to be realized at amenable experimental conditions.

Tunable Magnetic Domains in Ferrimagnetic MnSb2Te4.

Highly tunable properties make Mn(Bi,Sb)2Te4 a rich playground for exploring the interplay between band topology and magnetism: On one end, MnBi2Te4 is an antiferromagnetic topological insulator, while the magnetic structure of MnSb2Te4 (MST) can be tuned between antiferromagnetic and ferrimagnetic. Motivated to control electronic properties through real-space magnetic textures, we use magnetic force microscopy (MFM) to image the domains of ferrimagnetic MST. We find that magnetic field tunes between stripe and bubble domain morphologies, raising the possibility of topological spin textures. Moreover, we combine in situ transport with domain manipulation and imaging to both write MST device properties and directly measure the scaling of the Hall response with the domain area. This work demonstrates measurement of the local anomalous Hall response using MFM and opens the door to reconfigurable domain-based devices in the M(B,S)T family.

Unified theory of the anomalous and topological Hall effects with phase-space Berry curvatures.

Spontaneously broken time-reversal symmetry in magnetic materials leads to a Hall response, with a nonzero voltage transverse to an applied current, even in the absence of external magnetic fields. It is common to analyze the Hall resistivity of chiral magnets as the sum of two terms: an anomalous Hall effect arising from spin-orbit coupling and a topological Hall signal coming from skyrmions, which are topologically nontrivial spin textures. The theoretical justification for such a decomposition has long remained an open problem. Using a controlled semiclassical approach that includes all phase-space Berry curvatures, we show that the solution of the Boltzmann equation leads to a Hall resistivity that is just the sum of an anomalous term arising from momentum-space curvature and a topological term related to the real-space curvature. We also present numerically exact results from a Kubo formalism that complement the semiclassical approach.

Enhancing Perpendicular Magnetic Anisotropy in Garnet Ferrimagnet by Interfacing with Few-Layer WTe2.

Engineering magnetic anisotropy in a ferro- or ferrimagnetic (FM) thin film is crucial in a spintronic device. One way to modify the magnetic anisotropy is through the surface of the FM thin film. Here, we report the emergence of a perpendicular magnetic anisotropy (PMA) induced by interfacial interactions in a heterostructure comprised of a garnet ferrimagnet, Y3Fe5O12 (YIG), and a low-symmetry, high spin-orbit coupling (SOC) transition metal dichalcogenide, WTe2. At the same time, we also observed an enhancement in Gilbert damping in the WTe2-covered YIG area. Both the magnitude of interface-induced PMA and the Gilbert damping enhancement have no observable WTe2 thickness dependence down to a single quadruple layer, indicating that the interfacial interaction plays a critical role. The ability of WTe2 to enhance the PMA in FM thin film, combined with its previously reported capability to generate out-of-plane damping like spin torque, makes it desirable for magnetic memory applications.

Optical spectral weight, phase stiffness, and T c bounds for trivial and topological flat band superconductors.

We present exact results that give insight into how interactions lead to transport and superconductivity in a flat band where the electrons have no kinetic energy. We obtain bounds for the optical spectral weight for flat-band superconductors that lead to upper bounds for the superfluid stiffness and the two-dimensional (2D) [Formula: see text] We focus on on-site attraction [Formula: see text] on the Lieb lattice with trivial flat bands and on the π-flux model with topological flat bands. For trivial flat bands, the low-energy optical spectral weight [Formula: see text] with [Formula: see text] , where n is the flat-band density and Ω is the Marzari-Vanderbilt spread of the Wannier functions (WFs). We also obtain a lower bound involving the quantum metric. For topological flat bands, with an obstruction to localized WFs respecting all symmetries, we again obtain an upper bound for [Formula: see text] linear in [Formula: see text] We discuss the insights obtained from our bounds by comparing them with mean-field and quantum Monte Carlo results.