arXiv subjects

Andrea Young

Publications and source records attributed to Andrea Young.

13 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Van Hove Singularity-Driven Topological Magnetism in Twisted MoTe2

Van Hove singularities (vHSs) strongly amplify electron interactions and can stabilize correlated phases in topological bands. Here we report signatures of topological magnetism in large-angle twisted bilayer MoTe2 driven by the interplay of vHSs, strong correlations, and valley topology. In a 4.8 degree device, electrostatic tuning to a vHS produces a spontaneous anomalous Hall hot spot near nu = -1. Combined transport and reflective magnetic circular dichroism measurements indicate that this regime is not governed by magnetization alone, but instead emerges from a correlated intervalley-coherent antiferromagnetic state that evolves with doping into a canted phase. With increasing magnetic field, the Hall response develops an additional finite-field component consistent with a topological Hall effect from a noncoplanar spin texture, before transitioning into a C = -1 Chern insulator. Our results establish tunable vHSs in moire topological bands as a route to chiral magnetism and engineering topological phase transitions.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2026

Finite-momentum Cooper plasmons in superconducting terahertz microcavities

The phase mode of a superconductor's order parameter encodes fundamental information about pairing and dissipation, but is typically inaccessible at low frequencies due to the Anderson-Higgs mechanism. Superconducting samples thinner than the London penetration depth, however, support a gapless phase mode whose dispersion can be reshaped by a proximal screening layer. Here, we theoretically and experimentally show that this screened phase mode in a superconducting thin film integrated into on-chip terahertz circuitry naturally forms a superconducting microcavity that hosts resonant finite-momentum standing waves of supercurrent density, which we term Cooper plasmons. We measure two Cooper plasmons in a superconducting NbN microcavity and demonstrate that their resonance frequencies and linewidths independently report the density of participating carriers and plasmon's dissipation at finite momenta. Our results reveal an emergent collective mode of an integrated superconductor-circuit system and establish design principles for engineering or suppressing Cooper plasmons in superconducting terahertz devices and circuits.

cond-mat.supr-con↗

arXiv2022

Realization of the Haldane Chern insulator in a moiré lattice

The Chern insulator displays a quantized Hall effect without Landau levels. In a landmark paper in 1988, Haldane showed that a Chern insulator could be realized through complex next-nearest-neighbor hopping in a honeycomb lattice. Despite its profound impact on the field of topological physics and recent implementation in cold-atom experiments, the Haldane model has remained elusive in solid-state materials. Here, we report the experimental realization of a Haldane Chern insulator in AB-stacked MoTe2/WSe2 moiré bilayers, which form a honeycomb moiré lattice with two sublattices residing in different layers. We show that the moiré bilayer filled with two charge particles per unit cell is a quantum spin Hall (QSH) insulator with a tunable charge gap. Under a small out-of-plane magnetic field, it becomes a Chern insulator with Chern number c=1 from magneto-transport studies. The results are qualitatively captured by a generalized Kane-Mele tight-binding Hamiltonian. The Zeeman field splits the QSH insulator into two halves of opposite valley--one with a positive and the other a negative moiré band gap. Our study highlights the unique potential of semiconductor moiré materials in engineering topological lattice Hamiltonians.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2018

Topological exciton Fermi surfaces in two-component fractional quantized Hall insulators

A wide variety of two-dimensional electron systems (2DES) allow for independent control of the total and relative charge density of two-component fractional quantum Hall (FQH) states. In particular, a recent experiment on bilayer graphene (BLG) observed a continuous transition between a compressible and incompressible phase at total filling $ν_T = \frac{1}{2}$ as charge is transferred between the layers, with the remarkable property that the incompressible phase has a finite interlayer polarizability. We argue that this occurs because the topological order of $ν_T = \frac{1}{2}$ systems supports a novel type of interlayer exciton that carries Fermi statistics. If the fermionic excitons are lower in energy than the conventional bosonic excitons (i.e., electron-hole pairs), they can form an emergent neutral Fermi surface, providing a possible explanation of an incompressible yet polarizable state at $ν_T = \frac{1}{2}$. We perform exact diagonalization studies which demonstrate that fermionic excitons are indeed lower in energy than bosonic excitons. This suggests that a "topological exciton metal" hidden inside a FQH insulator may have been realized experimentally in BLG. We discuss several detection schemes by which the topological exciton metal can be experimentally probed.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2017

Bilayer Graphene as a platform for Bosonic Symmetry Protected Topological States

Bosonic symmetry protected topological (BSPT) states, the bosonic analogue of topological insulators, have attracted enormous theoretical interest in the last few years. Although BSPT states have been classified by various approaches, there is so far no successful experimental realization of any BSPT state in two or higher dimensions. In this paper, we propose that a two dimensional BSPT state with $U(1) \times U(1)$ symmetry can be realized in bilayer graphene in a magnetic field. Here the two $U(1)$ symmetries represent total spin $S^z$ and total charge conservation respectively. The Coulomb interaction plays a central role in this proposal -- it gaps out all the fermions at the boundary, so that only bosonic charge and spin degrees of freedom are gapless and protected at the edge. Based on the bosonic nature of the boundary states, we derive the bulk wave function for the bosonic charge and spin degrees of freedom, which takes exactly the same form as the desired BSPT state. We also propose that the bulk quantum phase transition between the BSPT and trivial phase, could become a "bosonic phase transition" with interactions. That is, only bosonic modes close their gap at the transition, which is fundamentally different from all the well-known topological insulator to trivial insulator transitions which occur for free fermion systems. We discuss various experimental consequences of this proposal.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2016

Electrically tunable multi-terminal SQUID-on-tip

We present a new nanoscale superconducting quantum interference device (SQUID) whose interference pattern can be shifted electrically in-situ. The device consists of a nanoscale four-terminal/four-junction SQUID fabricated at the apex of a sharp pipette using a self-aligned three-step deposition of Pb. In contrast to conventional two-terminal/two-junction SQUIDs that display optimal sensitivity when flux biased to about a quarter of the flux quantum, the additional terminals and junctions allow optimal sensitivity at arbitrary applied flux, thus eliminating the magnetic field "blind spots". We demonstrate spin sensitivity of 5 to 8 $μ_B/\text{Hz}^{1/2}$ over a continuous field range of 0 to 0.5 T, with promising applications for nanoscale scanning magnetic imaging.

cond-mat.supr-con↗

arXiv2010

Constant Scalar Curvature Metrics on Boundary Complexes of Cyclic Polytopes

In [7], a notion of constant scalar curvature metrics on piecewise flat manifolds is defined. Such metrics are candidates for canonical metrics on discrete manifolds. In this paper, we define a class of vertex transitive metrics on certain triangulations of $\mathbb{S}^3$; namely, the boundary complexes of cyclic polytopes. We use combinatorial properties of cyclic polytopes to show that, for any number of vertices, these metrics have constant scalar curvature.

math.DG↗

arXiv2010

Regge's Einstein-Hilbert Functional on the Double Tetrahedron

The double tetrahedron is the triangulation of the three-sphere gotten by gluing together two congruent tetrahedra along their boundaries. As a piecewise flat manifold, its geometry is determined by its six edge lengths, giving a notion of a metric on the double tetrahedron. We study notions of Einstein metrics, constant scalar curvature metrics, and the Yamabe problem on the double tetrahedron, with some reference to the possibilities on a general piecewise flat manifold. The main tool is analysis of Regge's Einstein-Hilbert functional, a piecewise flat analogue of the Einstein-Hilbert (or total scalar curvature) functional on Riemannian manifolds. We study the Einstein-Hilbert-Regge functional on the space of metrics and on discrete conformal classes of metrics.

math.DG↗

arXiv2010

Landau Level Collapse in Gated Graphene Structures

We describe a new regime of magnetotransport in two dimensional electron systems in the presence of a narrow potential barrier imposed by external gates. In such systems, the Landau level states, confined to the barrier region in strong magnetic fields, undergo a deconfinement transition as the field is lowered. We present transport measurements showing Shubnikov-de Haas (SdH) oscillations which, in the unipolar regime, abruptly disappear when the strength of the magnetic field is reduced below a certain critical value. This behavior is explained by a semiclassical analysis of the transformation of closed cyclotron orbits into open, deconfined trajectories. Comparison to SdH-type resonances in the local density of states is presented.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2009

Ricci Yang-Mills solitons on nilpotent Lie groups

The purpose of this paper is to introduce the Ricci Yang-Mills soliton equations on nilpotent Lie groups. In the 2-step nilpotent setting, we show that these equations are strictly weaker than the Ricci soliton equations. Using techniques from Geometric Invariant Theory, we develop a procedure to build many different kinds of Ricci Yang-Mills solitons. We finish this note by producing examples of Lie groups that do not admit Ricci soliton metrics but that do admit Ricci Yang-Mills soliton metrics.

math.DG↗

arXiv2009

Cross curvature flow on a negatively curved solid torus

The classic 2pi-Theorem of Gromov and Thurston constructs a negatively curved metric on certain 3-manifolds obtained by Dehn filling. By Geometrization, any such manifold admits a hyperbolic metric. We outline a program using cross curvature flow to construct a smooth one-parameter family of metrics between the "2pi-metric" and the hyperbolic metric. We make partial progress in the program, proving long-time existence, preservation of negative sectional curvature, curvature bounds, and integral convergence to hyperbolic for the metrics under consideration.

math.DG↗

arXiv2008

Stability of the Ricci Yang-Mills flow at Einstein Yang-Mills metrics

Let $P$ be a principal U(1)-bundle over a closed manifold $M$. On $P$, one can define a modified version of the Ricci flow called the Ricci Yang-Mills flow, due to these equations being a coupling of Ricci flow and the Yang-Mills heat flow. We use maximal regularity theory and ideas of Simonett concerning the asymptotic behavior of abstract quasilinear parabolic partial differential equations to study the stability of the volume-normalized Ricci Yang-Mills flow at Einstein Yang-Mills metrics in dimension two. In certain cases, we show the presence of a center manifold of fixed points, while in others, we show the existence of an asymptotically stable fixed point.

math.DG↗

arXiv2008

Asymptotic Stability of the Cross Curvature Flow at a Hyperbolic Metric

We show that there exists a suitable neighborhood of a constant curvature hyperbolic metric such that, for all initial data in this neighborhood, the corresponding solution to a normalized cross curvature flow exists for all time and converges to a hyperbolic metric. We show that the same technique proves an analogous result for Ricci flow. Additionally, we show short time existence and uniqueness of cross curvature flow for a more general class of initial data than was previously known.

math.DG↗