arXiv subjects

Giacomo Mazza

Publications and source records attributed to Giacomo Mazza.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Persistent currents, whirlpools, and local Chern markers in twisted TMD Chern insulators

Recent materials advances have made it possible to fabricate twisted transition metal dichalcogenide homobilayers. These systems have been shown to host integer and fractional Chern insulating states. Because of spontaneous time reversal symmetry breaking, their ground state harbors intriguing spin-polarized currents with whirlpools on the moiré length scale that can be measured by scanning probe methods. We first provide a quantitative analysis of these persistent currents and then show that the maximum of the amplitude of the current density in the bulk of the sample is an accurate tracker of topological order. We conclude by calculating how the quantization of the Hall conductance is affected by finite-size effects.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2026

Magnetic field control of the excitonic transition in Ta$_2$NiSe$_5$

The formation of excitonic insulator phases in quantum materials is often masked by structural distortions caused by the coupling between electronic and phononic order parameters. Here we show that the candidate material Ta$_2$NiSe$_5$ is characterized by a metastable excitonic insulating phase that is decoupled from the lattice, and that can be stabilized for sufficiently high applied magnetic fields. By considering the interplay between the excitonic and structural instabilities, we predict a magnetic field induced transition from the low-temperature structurally distorted semiconducting phase to an undistorted excitonic insulator phase with ground state loop currents. Before the transition, the existence of a latent excitonic phase can be detected by the magnetic field softening of the phonon mode associated with the structural distortion. These results highlight an unbiased route towards the disentanglement of the coupled excitonic-structural transition in Ta$_2$NiSe$_5$, and uncover a general mechanism for magnetic field control of competing phases in quantum materials.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2025

Polariton-induced superconductivity in two-dimensional metals

The electronic properties of two-dimensional (2D) metals are altered by changes in their three-dimensional dielectric environment. In this Letter we propose that superconductivity can be induced in a 2D metal by resonant coupling between its plasmonic collective modes and optical phonons in a nearby polar dielectric. Specifically, we predict that relatively high-temperature superconductivity can be induced in bilayer graphene twisted to an angle somewhat larger than the magic value by surrounding it with a THz polar dielectric. Our conclusions are based on numerical solutions of Eliashberg equations for massless Dirac fermions with tunable Fermi velocities and Fermi energies, and can be understood qualitatively in terms of a generalized McMillan formula.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2025

Time-dependent Variational Principles for Hybrid Non-Unitary Dynamics: Application to Driven-Dissipative Superconductors

We introduce time-dependent variational principles to study the non-unitary dynamics of open quantum many-body systems, including dynamics described by the full Lindblad master equation, the non-Hermitian dynamics corresponding to the no-click limit of the fully post-selected quantum trajectories, and the dynamics described by a hybrid Lindbladian with a control parameter $α$ which interpolates between the full post-selection and averaging over all quantum trajectories. As an application we study the non-unitary dynamics of a lossy or driven-dissipative BCS superconductors, evolving in presence of two-body losses and two-body pumps. We show that the non-Hermitian limit acts as a singular limit of the hybrid dissipative dynamics, leading to a sharp modification of the universal approach to the driven-dissipative steady-states. By considering the dissipative dynamics with pair losses, we show that, as the non-Hermitian limit is approached, the density dynamics sharply evolves from a universal power-law to exponential decay that converges towards a quasi-steady plateau characterized by the freezing of the particle depletion due to pair losses. The reached quasi-stationary density increases as a function of the dissipation rate highlighting the emergence of a non-Hermitian Zeno effect in the lossy dynamics. For the driven-dissipative case, we show that, in the non-Hermitian limit, the system gets trapped into an effective negative temperature state, thus skipping the infinite temperature steady-state reached in the presence of finite contribution of the quantum jumps. We rationalize these findings in terms of the conservation of the length of the pseudospins which, in the non-Hermitian limit, suppresses the effective single-particle losses and pumps acting on the non-condensed particles.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2025

Entanglement detection in quantum materials with competing orders

We investigate entanglement detection in quantum materials through criteria based on the simultaneous suppression of collective matter excitations. Unlike other detection schemes, these criteria can be applied to continuous and unbounded variables. By considering a system of interacting dipoles on a lattice, we show the detection of collective entanglement arising from two different physical mechanisms, namely, the ferroelectric ordering and the dressing of matter degrees of freedom by light. In the latter case, the detection shows the formation of a collective entangled phase not directly related to spontaneous symmetry breaking. These results open a new perspective for the entanglement characterization of competing orders in quantum materials, and have direct application to quantum paraelectrics with large polariton splittings.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2025

Next-generation EDIpack: A Lanczos-based package for quantum impurity models featuring general broken-symmetry phases, flexible bath topologies and multi-platform interoperability

We present a next-generation version of EDIpack, a flexible, high-performance numerical library using Lanczos-based exact diagonalization to solve generic quantum impurity problems, such as those introduced in Dynamical Mean-Field Theory to describe extended strongly correlated materials. This new release efficiently solves impurity problems allowing for different broken-symmetry solutions, including superconductivity, featuring local spin-orbit coupling and/or electron-phonon coupling. It provides quick access to dynamical correlation functions on the entire complex frequency plane at zero and low-temperatures. The modular architecture of the software not only provides Fortran APIs but also includes bindings to C/C++, interfaces with Python and Julia or with TRIQS and w2dynamics research platforms, thus ensuring unprecedented level of inter-operability. The outlook includes further extensions to study quantum materials and cold atoms quantum simulators, as well as quantum information applications.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2025

Tuning Fermi Liquids with polaritonic Cavities

The question of whether or not passive sub-wavelength cavities can alter the properties of quantum materials is currently attracting a great deal of attention. In this Article we show that the Fermi liquid parameters of a two-dimensional metal are modified by cavity polariton modes, and that these changes can be monitored by measuring a paradigmatic magneto-transport phenomenon, Shubnikov-de Haas oscillations in a weak perpendicular magnetic field. This effect is intrinsic, and totally unrelated to disorder. As an illustrative example, we carry out explicit calculations of the quasiparticle velocity of graphene in a planar van der Waals cavity formed by natural hyperbolic crystals and metal gates. The largest effects of the cavity occur when the phonon polariton modes of the former match energetically the graphene plasmon. For typical graphene carrier densities this occurs in the Terahertz spectral range.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2025

Ultrafast dynamics of quantum matter driven by time-energy entangled photons

We study the dynamics of quantum matter interacting with time-energy entangled photons. We consider the stimulation of a collective mode of a two-dimensional material by means of one of the two partners of a time-energy entangled pair of photons. Using an exactly solvable model, we analyze the out-of-equilibrium properties of both light and matter degrees of freedom, and show how entanglement in the incident photons deeply modifies relevant time scales of the light-matter interaction process. We find that entanglement strongly suppresses the delay between the transmission and absorption events, which become synchronous in the limit of strongly entangled wave packets. By comparing numerical simulations with analytic modeling, we trace back this behavior to the representation of entangled wave packets in terms of a superposition of multiple train pulses containing an increasing number of ultrashort non-entangled packets. As a result, we show that the entangled driving allows the creation of a matter excitation on a time scale shorter than the temporal width of the pulse. Eventually, by analyzing temporal correlations of the excited matter degrees of freedom, we show that driving with entangled photons imprints characteristic temporal correlations of time-energy entangled modes in the matter degree of freedom.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2024

Polaron formation in insulators and the key role of hole scattering processes: Band insulators, charge density waves and Mott transition

A mobile impurity immersed in a non-interacting Fermi sea is dressed by the gapless particle-hole excitations of the fermionic medium. This conventional Fermi-polaron setting is well described by the so-called ladder approximation, which consists in neglecting impurity-hole scattering processes. In this work, we analyze polaron formation in the context of insulating states of matter, considering increasing levels of correlation in the medium:~band insulators originating from external periodic potentials, spontaneously-formed charge density waves, and a Fermi-Hubbard system undergoing a metal-Mott insulator transition. The polaron spectral function is shown to exhibit striking signatures of the underlying fermionic background, such as the single-particle band gap, particle-hole symmetry and the transition to the Mott state. These signatures are identified within the framework of the Chevy ansatz, i.e. upon restricting the Hilbert space to single particle-hole excitations. Interestingly, we find that the ladder approximation is inaccurate in these band systems, due to the fact that the particle and hole scattering phase spaces are comparable. Our results provide a step forward in the understanding of polaron formation in correlated many-body media, which are relevant to both cold-atom and semiconductor experiments.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2023

Hidden excitonic quantum states with broken time-reversal symmetry

The spontaneous breaking of time-reversal symmetry due to purely-orbital mechanisms (i.e.~not involving spin degrees of freedom) yields extremely exotic phases of matter such as Chern insulators and chiral superconductors. In this Letter, we show that excitonic insulators, by exploiting the transition from the excitonic ground state to a purely-orbital time reversal symmetry broken hidden state, can realize another notable example of this class. The transition to the hidden state is controlled by engineered geometrical constraints which enable the coupling between the excitonic order parameter and the free-space electromagnetic field. These results pave the way towards exotic orbital magnetic order in quantum materials and are also relevant for disentangling excitonic phase transitions from trivial structural ones.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2023

Dissipative Dynamics of a Fermionic Superfluid with Two-Body Losses

We study the dissipative dynamics of a fermionic superfluid in presence of two-body losses. We use a variational approach for the Lindblad dynamics and obtain dynamical equations for Anderson's pseudo-spins where dissipation enters as a complex pairing interaction as well as effective, density-dependent, single particle losses which break the conservation of the pseudo-spin norm. We show that this latter has key consequences on the dynamical behavior of the system. In the case of a sudden switching of two-body losses we show that the superfluid order parameter decays much faster than then particle density at short times and eventually slows-down, setting into a power-law decay at longer time scales driven by the depletion of the system. We then consider a quench of pairing interaction, leading to coherent oscillations in the unitary case, followed by the switching of the dissipation. We show that losses wash away the dynamical BCS synchronization by introducing not only damping but also a renormalization of the frequency of coherent oscillations, which depends non-linearly from the rate of the two-body losses.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2022

Strongly correlated exciton-polarons in twisted homo-bilayer heterostructures

We consider dressing of excitonic properties by strongly correlated electrons in gate controlled twisted homo-bilayer heterostructures. The combined effect of the moiré potential and the Coulomb interaction supports the formation of different strongly correlated phases depending on the filling, including charge-ordered metals or incompressible insulators at integer occupation. The coupling between excitons and electrons results in a splitting of the excitonic resonance into an attractive and a repulsive polaron peak. Analyzing the properties of the exciton-polarons across the different phases of the system, we reveal a discontinuous evolution of the spectrum with the formation of a double-peak structure in the repulsive polaron branch. The double-peak structure emerges for non-integer fillings and it is controlled by the energy separation between the quasi-particle states close to the Fermi level and the high-energy doublons excitations. Our results demonstrate that exciton-polarons carry a clear hallmark of the electronic correlations and, thus, provide a direct signature of the formation of correlation driven insulators in gate controlled heterostructures.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2022

Common microscopic origin of the phase transitions in Ta$_2$NiS$_5$ and the excitonic insulator candidate Ta$_2$NiSe$_5$

The structural phase transition in Ta$_2$NiSe$_5$ has been envisioned as driven by the formation of an excitonic insulating phase. However, the role of structural and electronic instabilities on crystal symmetry breaking has yet to be disentangled. Meanwhile, the phase transition in its complementary material Ta$_2$NiS$_5$ does not show any experimental hints of an excitonic insulating phase. We present a microscopic investigation of the electronic and phononic effects involved in the structural phase transition in Ta$_2$NiSe$_5$ and Ta$_2$NiS$_5$ using extensive first-principles calculations. In both materials the crystal symmetries are broken by phonon instabilities, which in turn lead to changes in the electronic bandstructure also observed in experiment. A total energy landscape analysis shows no tendency towards a purely electronic instability and we find that a sizeable lattice distortion is needed to open a bandgap. We conclude that an excitonic instability is not needed to explain the phase transition in both Ta$_2$NiSe$_5$ and Ta$_2$NiS$_5$.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2021

Optical dressing of the electronic response of two-dimensional semiconductors in quantum and classical descriptions of cavity electrodynamics

We study quantum effects of the vacuum light-matter interaction in materials embedded in optical cavities. We focus on the electronic response of a two-dimensional semiconductor placed inside a planar cavity. By using a diagrammatic expansion of the electron-photon interaction, we describe signatures of light-matter hybridization characterized by large asymmetric shifts of the spectral weight at resonant frequencies. We follow the evolution of the light-dressing from the cavity to the free-space limit. In the cavity limit, light-matter hybridization results in a modification of the optical gap with sizeable spectral weight appearing below the bare gap edge. In the limit of large cavities, we find a residual redistribution of spectral weight which becomes independent of the distance between the two mirrors. We show that the photon dressing of the electronic response can be fully explained by using a classical description of light. The classical description is found to hold up to a strong coupling regime of the light-matter interaction highlighted by the large modification of the photon spectra with respect to the empty cavity. We show that, despite the strong coupling, quantum corrections are negligibly small and weakly dependent on the cavity confinement. As a consequence, in contrast to the optical gap, the single particle electronic band gap is not sensibly modified by the strong-coupling. Our results show that quantum corrections are dominated by off-resonant photon modes at high energy. As such, cavity confinement can hardly be seen as a knob to control the quantum effects of the light-matter interaction in vacuum.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2021

Thermal dynamics and electronic temperature waves in layered correlated materials

We explore layered strongly correlated materials as a platform to identify and control unconventional heat transfer phenomena. We demonstrate that these systems can be tailored to sustain a wide spectrum of heat transport regimes, ranging from ballistic, to hydrodynamic all the way to diffusive. Within the hydrodynamic regime, wave-like temperature oscillations are predicted up to room temperature. All the above phenomena have a purely electronic origin, stemming from the existence of two components in the electronic system, each one thermalized at different temperatures. The interaction strength can be exploited as a knob to control the different thermal transport regimes. The present results pave the way to transition-metal oxide heterostructures as building blocks for nanodevices exploiting the wave-like nature of heat transfer on the picosecond time scale.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2020

Interface and bulk superconductivity in superconducting heterostructures with enhanced critical temperatures

We consider heterostructures obtained by stacking layers of two s-wave superconductors with significantly different coupling strengths, respectively in the weak- and strong-coupling regimes. The weak- and strong-coupling superconductors are chosen with similar critical temperatures for bulk systems. Using dynamical mean-field theory methods, we find an ubiquitous enhancement of the superconducting critical temperature for all the heterostructures where a single layer of one of the two superconductors is alternated with a thicker multilayer of the other. Two distinct physical regimes can be identified as a function of the thickness of the larger layer: (i) an inherently inhomogeneous superconductor characterized by the properties of the two isolated bulk superconductors where the enhancement of the critical temperature is confined to the interface and (ii) a bulk superconductor with an enhanced critical temperature extending to the whole heterostructure. We characterize the crossover between these regimes in terms of the competition between two length scales connected with the proximity effect and the pair coherence.

cond-mat.supr-con↗

arXiv2020

Nature of symmetry breaking at the excitonic insulator transition: Ta$_2$NiSe$_5$

Ta$_2$NiSe$_5$ is one of the most promising materials for hosting an excitonic insulator ground state. While a number of experimental observations have been interpreted in this way, the precise nature of the symmetry breaking occurring in Ta$_2$NiSe$_5$, the electronic order parameter, and a realistic microscopic description of the transition mechanism are, however, missing. By a symmetry analysis based on first-principles calculations, we uncover the \emph{discrete} lattice symmetries which are broken at the transition. We identify a purely electronic order parameter of excitonic nature that breaks these discrete crystal symmetries and contributes to the experimentally observed lattice distortion from an orthorombic to a monoclinic phase. Our results provide a theoretical framework to understand and analyze the excitonic transition in Ta$_2$NiSe$_5$ and settle the fundamental questions about symmetry breaking governing the spontaneous formation of excitonic insulating phases in solid-state materials.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2020

Electromagnetic coupling in tight-binding models for strongly correlated light and matter

We discuss the construction of low-energy tight-binding Hamiltonians for condensed matter systems with a strong coupling to the quantum electromagnetic field. Such Hamiltonians can be obtained by projecting the continuum theory on a given set of Wannier orbitals. However, different representations of the continuum theory lead to different low-energy formulations, because different representations may entangle light and matter, transforming orbitals into light-matter hybrid states before the projection. In particular, a multi-center Power-Zienau-Woolley transformation yields a dipolar Hamiltonian which incorporates the light-matter coupling via both Peierls phases and a polarization density. We compare this dipolar gauge Hamiltonian and the straightforward Coulomb gauge Hamiltonian for a one-dimensional solid, to describe sub-cycle light-driven electronic motion in the semiclassical limit, and a coupling of the solid to a quantized cavity mode which renormalizes the band-structure into electron-polariton bands. Both descriptions yield the same result when many bands are taken into account, but the dipolar Hamiltonian is more accurate when the model is restricted to few electronic bands, while the Coulomb Hamiltonian requires fewer electromagnetic modes.

cond-mat.str-el↗