arXiv subjects

Di Xiao

Publications and source records attributed to Di Xiao.

At least 55 records · Page 3Linked to original sources

arXiv2025

Scientific Objectives of the Xue-shan-mu-chang 15-meter Submillimeter Telescope

Submillimeter astronomy is poised to revolutionize our understanding of the Universe by revealing cosmic phenomena hidden from optical and near-infrared observations, particularly those associated with interstellar dust, molecular gas, and star formation. The Xue-shan-mu-chang 15-meter submillimeter telescope (XSMT-15m), to be constructed at a premier high-altitude site (4813 m) in Qinghai, China, marks a major milestone for Chinese astronomy, establishing the China mainland's first independently developed, world-class submillimeter facility. Equipped with state-of-the-art instruments, XSMT-15m will address a diverse range of frontier scientific questions spanning extragalactic astronomy, Galactic structure, time-domain astrophysics, and astrochemistry. In synergy with current and forthcoming observatories, XSMT-15m will illuminate the formation and evolution of galaxies, unravel the physical and chemical processes shaping the interstellar medium, and explore transient phenomena in the submillimeter regime. These capabilities will advance our understanding across extragalactic astronomy, Galactic ecology, astrochemistry, and time-domain astrophysics, inaugurating a new era for submillimeter research in China and the northern hemisphere.

astro-ph.GA↗

arXiv2025

Visualizing Electronic Structure of Twisted Bilayer MoTe2 in Devices

The pursuit of emergent quantum phenomena lies at the forefront of modern condensed matter physics. A recent breakthrough in this arena is the discovery of the fractional quantum anomalous Hall effect (FQAHE) in twisted bilayer MoTe2 (tbMoTe2), marking a paradigm shift and establishing a versatile platform for exploring the intricate interplay among topology, magnetism, and electron correlations. While significant progress has been made through both optical and electrical transport measurements, direct experimental insights into the electronic structure - crucial for understanding and modeling this system - have remained elusive. Here, using spatially and angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (μ-ARPES), we directly map the electronic band structure of tbMoTe2. We identify the valence band maximum, whose partial filling underlies the FQAHE, at the K points, situated approximately 150 meV above the Γ valley. By fine-tuning the doping level via in-situ alkali metal deposition, we also resolve the conduction band minimum at the K point, providing direct evidence that tbMoTe2 exhibits a direct band gap - distinct from all previously known moire bilayer transition metal dichalcogenide systems. These results offer critical insights for theoretical modeling and advance our understanding of fractionalized excitations and correlated topological phases in this emergent quantum material.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2025

Prospects for Time-Domain and Multi-Messenger Science with eXTP

In this new era of time-domain and multi-messenger astronomy, various new transients and new phenomena are constantly being discovered thanks to the rapid advances in observations, which provide the excellent opportunity to study the physics in the extreme environments. The enhanced X-ray Timing and Polarimetry mission (eXTP), planned to be launched in 2030, has several key advantages, including advanced polarimetry, high sensitivity & large effective area, and wide energy range coverage, which make it a groundbreaking project in high-energy astrophysics. In this article, we briefly introduce the potential time-domain and multi-messenger targets for eXTP, including gravitational-wave (GW) counterparts, gamma-ray bursts (GRBs), magnetars and fast radio bursts (FRBs), tidal disruption events (TDEs), supernovae, high energy neutrinos and TeV active galactic nucleus (AGNs), and so on. We discuss the advantages of future eXTP observations for detecting these sources, their detection capabilities, the abilities to distinguish theoretical models, and their applications in gravity and cosmology.

astro-ph.HE↗

arXiv2025

Optical Control of Integer and Fractional Chern Insulators

Optical control of topology, particularly in the presence of electron correlations, is a fascinating topic with broad scientific and technological impact. Twisted MoTe$_2$ bilayer (tMoTe$_2$) is a newly discovered zero-field fractional Chern insulator (FCI), exhibiting the fractionally quantized anomalous Hall (FQAH) effect. Since the chirality of the edge states and sign of the Chern number are determined by the underlying ferromagnetic polarization, manipulation of ferromagnetism would realize control of the CI/FCI states. Here, we demonstrate control and switching of ferromagnetic polarization, and thus the CI and FCI states by circularly polarized optical pumping in tMoTe$_2$. At low optical excitation power, we achieve on-demand preparation of ferromagnetic polarization by optical training, i.e., electrically tuning the system from non-ferromagnetic to desirable ferromagnetic states accompanied with helicity-selective optical pumping. With increased excitation power, we further realize direct optical switching of ferromagnetic polarization at a temperature far below the Curie temperature. Both optical training and direct switching of ferromagnetism are most effective near CI/FCI states, which we attribute to a gap enhanced valley polarization of photo-injected holes. We show that the magnetization can be dynamically switched by modulating the helicity of optical excitation. Spatially resolved measurements further demonstrate optical writing of a ferromagnetic, and thus a CI (or FCI) domain. Our work realizes precise optical control of a topological quantum many-body system with potential applications in topological spintronics, quantum memories, and creation of exotic edge states by programmable patterning of integer and fractional QAH domains.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2025

Twist-angle transferable continuum model and second flat Chern band in twisted MoTe2 and WSe2

We develop a twist-angle transferable continuum model for twisted transition metal dichalcogenide (tTMD) homobilayers, using tMoTe2 and tWSe2 as examples. All model parameters are extracted from density functional theory (DFT) calculations at a single twist angle (3.89°) and monolayer data. Our model captures both lattice relaxation effects and the long-range behavior of piezoelectric and ferroelectric potentials. Leveraging lattice relaxations obtained via machine learning force fields (MLFFs), the model can be efficiently transferred to other twist angles without requiring additional DFT calculations. It accurately reproduces the DFT band dispersions and quantum geometries across a wide range of twist angles. Furthermore, our model reveals that a second flat Chern band arises near 2° when the interlayer potential difference becomes comparable to the interlayer tunneling. This continuum model provides a clear understanding and starting point for engineering novel electronic phases in moiré TMDs through twist angles and lattice relaxations.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2025

Universal Magnetic Phases in Twisted Bilayer MoTe$_2$

Twisted bilayer MoTe$_2$ (tMoTe$_2$) has emerged as a robust platform for exploring correlated topological phases, notably supporting fractional Chern insulator (FCI) states at zero magnetic field across a wide range of twist angles. The evolution of magnetism and topology with twist angle remains an open question. Here, we systematically map the magnetic phase diagram of tMoTe$_2$ using local optical spectroscopy and scanning nanoSQUID-on-tip (nSOT) magnetometry. We identify spontaneous ferromagnetism at moiré filling factors $ν= -1$ and $-3$ over a twist angle range from 2.1$^\circ$ to 3.7$^\circ$, revealing a universal, twist-angle-insensitive ferromagnetic phase. At 2.1$^\circ$, we further observe robust ferromagnetism at $ν= -5$, absent in the devices with larger twist angle -- a signature of the flattening of higher bands in this twist angle range. Temperature-dependent measurements reveal a contrasting twist-angle dependence of the Curie temperatures between $ν= -1$ and $ν= -3$, indicating distinct interplay between exchange interaction and bandwidth for the two Chern bands. Despite spontaneous time-reversal symmetry breaking, we find no evidence of a topological gap at $ν= -3$; however, fragile correlated topological phases could be obscured by the device disorder evident in our spatially resolved measurements. Our results establish a global framework for understanding and controlling magnetic order in tMoTe$_2$ and highlight its potential for accessing correlated topological phases in higher energy Chern band.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2025

Multi-year Polarimetric Monitoring of Four CHIME-Discovered Repeating Fast Radio Bursts with FAST

In this study, we report multi-year polarization measurements of four repeating FRBs initially discovered by CHIME: FRBs~20190117A, 20190208A, 20190303A, and 20190417A. We observed the four repeating FRBs with FAST, detecting a total of 66 bursts. Two bursts from FRB~20190417A exhibit a circular polarization signal-to-noise ratio greater than 7, with the highest circular polarization fraction recorded at 35.7%. While the bursts from FRBs 20190208A and 20190303A are highly linearly polarized, those from FRBs~20190117A and 20190417A show depolarization due to multi-path propagation, with σ_{\mathrm{RM}} = 2.78 \pm 0.05 rad m$^{-2}$ and 5.19 \pm 0.09 rad m$^{-2}$, respectively. The linear polarization distributions among five repeating FRB--FRBs~20190208A, 20190303A, 20201124A, 20220912A, and 20240114A--are nearly identical but show distinct differences from those of non-repeating FRBs. FRBs~20190117A, 20190303A, and 20190417A exhibit substantial rotation measure (RM) variations between bursts, joining other repeating FRBs in this behavior. Combining these findings with published results, 64% of repeating FRBs show RM variations greater than 50 rad m$^{-2}$, and 21\% exhibit RM reversals. A significant proportion of repeating FRBs reside in a dynamic magneto-ionic environment. The structure function of RM variations shows a power-law index of $γ\sim (0-0.8)$, corresponding to a shallow power spectrum $α= -(γ+ 2) \sim -(2.0-2.8)$ of turbulence, if the RM variations are attributed to turbulence. This suggests that the variations are dominated by small-scale RM density fluctuations. We perform K-S tests comparing the RMs of repeating and non-repeating FRBs, which reveal a marginal dichotomy in the distribution of their RMs.We caution that the observed dichotomy may be due to the small sample size and selection biases.

astro-ph.HE↗

arXiv2025

Spinless and spinful charge excitations in moiré Fractional Chern Insulators

Fractionally charged elementary excitations, the quasi-electron and quasi-hole, are one of the hallmarks of the fractional Chern insulator (FCI). In this work, we observe that spontaneous spin polarization in twisted MoTe$_2$ leads to multiple species of low-energy quasi-particles distinguished by their spin quantum numbers. We perform large-scale exact diagonalization (ED) calculations to investigate the nature of these excitations and develop a method to extract their fundamental energetic properties. Focusing on $θ= 3.7^{\circ}$ and filling factor $ν= -2/3$ relevant to recent experiments, we show that spin-preserving (spinless) charge excitations have smaller gap than spin-flipping (spinful) excitations both with and without band mixing. This result is in qualitative agreement with the measured magnetic field dependence of the transport gaps. Beyond the spinless and spinful quasi-particle gaps, we extract the full quasi-electron and quasi-hole ``band structure'' and find significant dispersion with emergent magnetic translation symmetry -- a fundamental departure from the immobile excitations of the quantum Hall fluid. Our results establish a framework for computing the properties of novel elementary excitations in FCIs.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2025

Geometric Origin of Phonon Magnetic Moment in Dirac Materials

We develop a theory for the phonon magnetic moment in doped Dirac materials, treating phonons as emergent gauge and gravitational fields coupled to Dirac fermions in curved space. By classifying electron-phonon coupling into angular momentum channels of Fermi surface deformation, we show that the phonon moment arises from two mechanisms: proportional to the electron Hall conductivity through the emergent gauge field coupling, and to the Hall viscosity through the frame field coupling. Applying our theory to Cd$_3$As$_2$ with first-principles calculations, we find quantitative agreement with experiment. Our results reveal a general mechanism for dynamically generating large phonon magnetism in metals and suggest a new route for probing Hall viscosity via phonon dynamics.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2025

Rotation and dispersion measure evolution of repeating fast radio bursts propagating through a magnetar flare ejecta

Rotation measure (RM) and dispersion measure (DM) are characteristic properties of fast radio bursts (FRBs) that contain important information of their source environment. The time evolution of RM and DM is more inclined to be ascribed to local plasma in the host galaxy rather than the intergalactic medium or free electrons in the Milky Way. Recently a sudden drastic RM change was reported for an active repeating FRB 20220529, implying that some kind of mass ejection happened near the source. In this work I suggest that magnetar flare ejecta could play this role and give rise to the significant RM change. I introduce a toy structured ejecta model and calculate the contribution to RM and DM by a typical flare event. I find that this model could reproduce the RM behaviour of FRB 20220529 well under reasonable parameters, and similar sudden change is expected as long as this source maintains its activity.

astro-ph.HE↗

arXiv2025

Observation of High-Temperature Dissipationless Fractional Chern Insulator

The fractional quantum anomalous Hall effect has recently been experimentally observed in zero-field fractional Chern insulators (FCI). However, an outstanding challenge is the presence of a substantial longitudinal resistance $R_{xx}$ (a few k$Ω$), even though the anomalous Hall resistance $R_{xy}$ is quantized. This dissipative behavior is likely linked to imperfect sample quality. Here, we report transport measurements of a drastically improved twisted $\text{MoTe}_2$ bilayer device, which exhibits quantized $R_{xy}$ and vanishing $R_{xx}$ for the $-2/3$ state, marking a dissipationless FCI. Contrary to fractional quantum Hall states where the energy gap increases with magnetic field, we find that the thermal activation gap of the observed FCI states decreases rapidly as the magnetic field rises from zero, then plateaus above a few teslas. This observation is attributed to the interplay between spin and charge gaps. Due to the spontaneous ferromagnetism, the spin gap dominates at low field, while the charge gap becomes appreciable once the magnetic field freezes spin fluctuations. For the $-2/3$ state, we estimate the spin and FCI gap of about 55 and 20 K, respectively. Our results provide insights into the energy scale of FCI and offer a pathway for quantum engineering of exotic correlated topological states.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2025

Observation of edge and bulk states in a three-site Kitaev chain

A chain of quantum dots (QDs) in semiconductor-superconductor hybrid systems can form an artificial Kitaev chain hosting Majorana bound states (MBSs). These zero-energy states are expected to be localised on the edges of the chain, at the outermost QDs. The remaining QDs, comprising the bulk, are predicted to host an excitation gap that protects the MBSs at the edges from local on-site perturbations. Here we demonstrate this connection between the bulk and edges in a minimal system, by engineering a three-site Kitaev chain in a two-dimensional electron gas. Through direct tunneling spectroscopy on each site, we show that the appearance of stable zero-bias conductance peaks at the outer QDs is correlated with the presence of an excitation gap in the middle QD. Furthermore, we show that this gap can be controlled by applying a superconducting phase difference between the two hybrid segments and that the MBSs are robust only when the excitation gap is present. We find a close agreement between experiments and the original Kitaev model, thus confirming key predictions for MBSs in a three-site chain.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2025

Magnetoelectric Control of Helical Light Emission in a Moiré Chern Magnet

Magnetoelectric effects and their coupling to light helicity are important for both fundamental science and applications in sensing, communication, and data storage. Traditional approaches require complex device architectures, involving separate spin-injection, ferromagnetic, and optically active layers. Recently, the emergence of 2D semiconductor moiré superlattices with flat Chern bands and strong light-matter interactions has established a simple yet powerful platform for exploring the coupling between photon, electron, and spin degrees of freedom. Here, we report efficient current control of spontaneous ferromagnetism and associated helicity of light emission in moiré MoTe2 bilayer - a system which hosts a rich variety of topological phases, including newly discovered zero-field fractional Chern insulators. We show that the current control is effective over a wide range of doping of the first moiré Chern band, implying the uniformity of the Berry curvature distribution over the flat band. By setting the system into the anomalous Hall metal phase, a current as small as 10nA is sufficient to switch the magnetic order, a substantial improvement over both conventional spin torque architectures and other moiré systems. The realized current control of ferromagnetism leads to continuous tuning of trion photoluminescence helicity from left to right circular via spin/valley Hall torque at zero magnetic field. Our results pave the way for topological opto-spintronics based on semiconductors with synthetic flat Chern bands.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2025

Hidden States and Dynamics of Fractional Fillings in tMoTe2 Moiré Superlattices

The fractional quantum anomalous Hall (FQAH) effect was recently discovered in twisted MoTe2 bilayers (tMoTe2). Experiments to date have revealed Chern insulators from hole doping at v = -1, -2/3, -3/5, and -4/7 (per moiré unit cell). In parallel, theories predict that, between v = -1 and -3, there exist exotic quantum phases, such as the coveted fractional topological insulators (FTI), fractional quantum spin Hall (FQSH) states, and non-abelian fractional states. Here we employ transient optical spectroscopy on tMoTe2 to reveal nearly 20 hidden states at fractional fillings that are absent in static optical sensing or transport measurements. A pump pulse selectively excites charge across the correlated or pseudo gaps, leading to the disordering (melting) of correlated states. A probe pulse detects the subsequent melting and recovery dynamics via exciton and trion sensing. Besides the known states, we observe additional fractional fillings between v = 0 and -1 and a large number of states on the electron doping side (v > 0). Most importantly, we observe new states at fractional fillings of the Chern bands at v = -4/3, -3/2, -5/3, -7/3, -5/2, and -8/3. These states are potential candidates for the predicted exotic topological phases. Moreover, we show that melting of correlated states occurs on two distinct time scales, 2-4 ps and 180-270 ps, attributed to electronic and phonon mechanisms, respectively. We discuss the differing dynamics of the electron and hole doped states from the distinct moiré conduction and valence bands.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2025

Higher Landau-Level Analogs and Signatures of Non-Abelian States in Twisted Bilayer MoTe$_2$

Recent experimental discovery of fractional Chern insulators at zero magnetic field in moiré superlattices has sparked intense interests in bringing Landau level physics to flat Chern bands. In twisted MoTe$_2$ bilayers (tMoTe$_2$), recent theoretical and experimental studies have found three consecutive flat Chern bands at twist angle $\sim 2^\circ$. In this work, we investigate whether higher Landau level physics can be found in these consecutive Chern bands. At twist angles $2.00^\circ$ and $1.89^\circ$, we identify four consecutive $C = 1$ bands for the $K$ valley in tMoTe$_2$. By constructing Wannier functions directly from density functional theory (DFT) calculations, a six-orbital model is developed to describe the consecutive Chern bands, with the orbitals forming a honeycomb lattice. Exact diagonalization on top of Hartree-Fock calculations are carried out with the Wannier functions. Especially, when the second moiré miniband is half-filled, signatures of non-Abelian states are found. Our Wannier-based approach in modelling moiré superlattices is faithful to DFT wave functions and can serve as benchmarks for continuum models. The possibility of realizing non-Abelian anyons at zero magnetic field also opens up a new pathway for fault-tolerant quantum information processing.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2025

Neural Preconditioning Operator for Efficient PDE Solves

We introduce the Neural Preconditioning Operator (NPO), a novel approach designed to accelerate Krylov solvers in solving large, sparse linear systems derived from partial differential equations (PDEs). Unlike classical preconditioners that often require extensive tuning and struggle to generalize across different meshes or parameters, NPO employs neural operators trained via condition and residual losses. This framework seamlessly integrates with existing neural network models, serving effectively as a preconditioner to enhance the performance of Krylov subspace methods. Further, by melding algebraic multigrid principles with a transformer-based architecture, NPO significantly reduces iteration counts and runtime for solving Poisson, Diffusion, and Linear Elasticity problems on both uniform and irregular meshes. Our extensive numerical experiments demonstrate that NPO outperforms traditional methods and contemporary neural approaches across various resolutions, ensuring robust convergence even on grids as large as 4096, far exceeding its initial training limits. These findings underscore the potential of data-driven preconditioning to transform the computational efficiency of high-dimensional PDE applications.

cs.CE↗

arXiv2025

Harnessing Scale and Physics: A Multi-Graph Neural Operator Framework for PDEs on Arbitrary Geometries

Partial Differential Equations (PDEs) underpin many scientific phenomena, yet traditional computational approaches often struggle with complex, nonlinear systems and irregular geometries. This paper introduces the AMG method, a Multi-Graph neural operator approach designed for efficiently solving PDEs on Arbitrary geometries. AMG leverages advanced graph-based techniques and dynamic attention mechanisms within a novel GraphFormer architecture, enabling precise management of diverse spatial domains and complex data interdependencies. By constructing multi-scale graphs to handle variable feature frequencies and a physics graph to encapsulate inherent physical properties, AMG significantly outperforms previous methods, which are typically limited to uniform grids. We present a comprehensive evaluation of AMG across six benchmarks, demonstrating its consistent superiority over existing state-of-the-art models. Our findings highlight the transformative potential of tailored graph neural operators in surmounting the challenges faced by conventional PDE solvers. Our code and datasets are available on https://github.com/lizhihao2022/AMG.

cs.LG↗

arXiv2025

A flux-controlled two-site Kitaev chain

In semiconducting-superconducting hybrid devices, Andreev bound states (ABSs) can mediate the coupling between quantum dots (QDs), allowing for the realisation of artificial Kitaev chains. In order to engineer Majorana bound states (MBSs) in these systems, one must control the energy of the ABSs. In this work, we show how extended ABSs in a flux tunable Josephson junction can be used to control the coupling between distant quantum dots separated by $\approx$ 1 $\mathrmμ$m. In particular, we demonstrate that the combination of electrostatic control and phase control over the ABSs significantly increases the parameter space in which MBSs are observed. Finally, by employing an additional spectroscopic probe in the hybrid region between the QDs, we gain information about the spatial distribution of the Majorana wave function in a two-site Kitaev chain.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗