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Xiutong Deng

Publications and source records attributed to Xiutong Deng.

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Spectral Visualization of Excitonic Pair Breaking at Individual Impurities in Ta2Pd3Te5

Excitonic insulators host the condensates of bound electron-hole pairs, offering a platform for studying correlated bosonic quantum states. Yet, how macroscopic coherence emerges from locally collapsed pairing remains elusive. Here, using scanning tunnelling spectroscopy, we report the impurity-induced pair breaking in an excitonic insulator Ta2Pd3Te5. Individual Te vacancies are found to generate a pair of spectral peaks within the excitonic gap. Their energies depend sensitively on the defect configurations and are continuously tunable by tip electric field, indicating controllable impurity scatterings. Spectral mapping shows spatially anisotropic and electronically coupled electron-hole components of the subgap states. These observations, together with mean-field modelling, suggest an excitonic pair-breaking origin. In the strongly electron-hole imbalanced region, a secondary pair-breaking effect, manifesting as an additional pair of subgap states with distinctly lower energies, can emerge, presenting the interplay of pairing breakings with different excitonic order parameters. Our findings demonstrate the spectroscopic 'fingerprint' of local excitonic depairing at the atomic level, offering a crucial clue to the critical behavior across excitonic condensation.

cond-mat.str-el

Magnetotransport and Carrier Dynamics in Quasi-One-Dimensional Antiferromagnet KMn$_6$Bi$_5$

Quasi-one-dimensional materials $A$Mn$_6$Bi$_5$ ($A$ = Na, K, Rb, Cs) exhibit unique electronic behaviors such as antiferromagnetism, charge density waves, and pressure-induced superconductivity. Thus, they serve as a suitable model system to investigate emergent quantum phenomena produced by the interactions among spin, charge, and lattice. Here we report the magnetotransport properties of KMn$_6$Bi$_5$, revealing a cascade of temperature-dependent carrier dynamics. Below 5 K, the system, despite its anisotropic electronic structure, could be effectively described by an isotropic two-band model and exhibits a large, non-saturating magnetoresistance ($\propto B^{1.8}$). Upon warming, a crossover to a single-band regime occurs around 20 K, driven by the suppression of a hole pocket. Electron density recovers as antiferromagnetic gap openings gradually close from 25 to 70 K which is just below the N$\mathrm{\acute{e}}$el temperature. Within this temperature range, field-quenched spin fluctuations suppress magnetoresistance. Furthermore, we attribute the low-temperature resistivity upturn to the scaling behavior of magnetoresistance. These findings provide crucial insights into the interplay of dimensionality, magnetism, and electron correlations in quasi-one-dimensional magnetic semimetals.

cond-mat.supr-con

Quasi-linear magnetoresistance and paramagnetic singularity in Hypervalent Bismuthide

Materials featuring hypervalent bismuth motifs have generated immense interest due to their extraordinary electronic structure and exotic quantum transport. In this study, we synthesized high-quality single crystals of La3ScBi5 characterized by one-dimensional hypervalent bismuth chains and performed a systematic investigation of the magnetoresistive behavior and quantum oscillations. The metallic La3ScBi5 exhibits a low-temperature plateau of electrical resistivity and quasi-linear positive magnetoresistance, with anisotropic magnetoresistive behaviors suggesting the presence of anisotropic Fermi surfaces. This distinctive transport phenomenon is perfectly elucidated by first-principles calculations utilizing the semiclassical Boltzmann transport theory. Furthermore, the nonlinear Hall resistivity pointed towards a multiband electronic structure, characterized by the coexistence of electron and hole carriers, which is further supported by our first-principles calculations. Angle-dependent de Haas-van Alphen oscillations are crucial for further elucidating its Fermiology and topological characteristics. Intriguingly, magnetization measurements unveiled a notable paramagnetic singularity at low fields, which might suggest the nontrivial nature of the surface states. Our findings underscore the interplay between transport phenomena and the unique electronic structure of hypervalent bismuthide La3ScBi5, opening avenues for exploring novel electronic applications.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci

Magnetic-Field Control of Tomonaga-Luttinger Liquids in Ta2Pd3Te5 Edge States

Ta2Pd3Te5 is a quasi-one-dimensional transition-metal telluride whose heavy atoms endow the material with strong spin-orbit coupling, while the Fermi level inside the bulk gap makes the low-energy electronic structure highly tunable.Theory and early experiments have already identified a wealth of emergent phases in this platform: an excitonic insulator driven by electron-hole binding, a second-order topological insulator protected by crystalline symmetry, a potential topological-protected quantum-spin-Hall edge, and proximity-induced edge supercurrents when coupled to a conventional s-wave superconductor. These properties make it a promising platform for hosting Majorana zero modes and quantum computation, provided that time-reversal symmetry can be broken by a Zeeman gap. In this work, we demonstrate that the one-dimensional edge channels of exfoliated Ta2Pd3Te5 host a robust and tunable Tomonaga-Luttinger liquid by electrostatic gating because it shifts the chemical potential across the bulk gap without changing the gap size. More importantly, the application of a magnetic field introduces a Zeeman gap that systematically increases the TLL power-law exponent alpha. Furthermore, rotating the field reveals a pronounced twofold anisotropy--alpha is maximal for a field parallel to the edge and minimal for a perpendicular orientation--originating from an orientation-dependent edge g-factor that is likely amplified by quantum-confinement-induced orbital-angular-moment quenching. The existence of gate-tunable edge supercurrents together with the field-controlled Zeeman gap provides a direct route to break time-reversal symmetry in a particle-hole-symmetric superconducting gap and thus to engineer a topological superconducting phase, paving the way towards Majorana-based quantum devices.

cond-mat.mes-hall

Crystalline electric field excitations in Weyl semimetal \textit{R}AlSi (\textit{R} = Ce, Pr and Nd)

The rare earth intermetallic system \textit{R}Al\textit{X} (\textit{R} = rare earth elements, \textit{X} = Si and Ge) is known to be a promising candidate of magnetic Weyl semimetal. Due to the complex interactions between the rare earth elements and surrounding atoms, as well as hybridization with itinerant electrons, this family likely possesses highly intriguing and novel magnetic structures and thus exhibits dynamic behaviors. We systematically probe polycrystalline samples of \textit{R}AlSi (\textit{R} = La, Ce, Pr and Nd) combining inelastic neutron scattering (INS), heat capacity and magnetic susceptibility measurements. The INS measurements identify well-resolved crystalline electric field (CEF) excitations at 19.2 and 24.9 meV in CeAlSi, at 5.4 meV in PrAlSi, and at 2.5 and 4.2 meV in NdAlSi. We analyzed the INS data using the corresponding CEF models and determined the CEF parameters and ground state wave functions of \textit{R}AlSi (\textit{R} = Ce, Pr and Nd). Our results suggest strong single-ion anisotropy in their ground states: $|\pm3/2\rangle$ (94.5\%) in CeAlSi, $|\pm3\rangle$ (99.2\%) in PrAlSi, and $|\pm9/2\rangle$ (76.2\%) in NdAlSi. Notably, the weaker anisotropy and strong exchange interactions in NdAlSi promote competing magnetic orders and CEF splitting at low temperature, contrasting with the robust CEF levels in magnetic states of CeAlSi and PrAlSi.

cond-mat.str-el

Optical Excitations of Flat Bands Induced by Exciton Condensation in Ta$_2$Pd$_3$Te$_{5}$

We report on the charge dynamics of Ta$_2$Pd$_3$Te$_5$ using temperature-dependent optical spectroscopy with polarized light. We observe a metal-insulator transition characterized by the collapse of Drude response and the emergence of sharp and narrow absorption peaks at low temperatures. Unlike previous excitonic insulator candidates such as TiSe$_2$ and Ta$_2$NiSe$_5$, where the excitonic order is intertwined with charge density wave or structural instabilities, the sharp features in Ta$_2$Pd$_3$Te$_5$ point to intrinsic excitonic excitations associated with ultra-flat bands driven by many-body renormalization of the band structure via spontaneous exciton condensation. Our findings thus provide clear-cut optical evidence for exciton condensation in a bulk crystal and establish Ta$_2$Pd$_3$Te$_5$ as a promising platform for exploring correlated quantum phases and novel excitonic phenomena.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci

Highly anisotropic Drude-weight-reduction and enhanced linear-dichroism in van der Waals Weyl semimetal Td-MoTe2 with coherent interlayer electronic transport

Weyl semimetal (WSM) states can be achieved by breaking spatial-inversion symmetry or time reversal symmetry. However, the anisotropy of the energy reduction contributing to the emergence of WSM states has seldom been investigated by experiments. A van der Waals metal MoTe2 exhibits a type-II WSM phase below the monoclinic-to-orthorhombic-phase-transition temperature Tc ~ 250 K. Here, we report a combined linearly-polarized optical-spectroscopy and electrical-transport study of MoTe2 at different temperatures. The Drude components in the a-axis, b-axis and c-axis optical conductivity spectra, together with the metallic out-of-plane and in-plane electrical resistivities, indicate the coherent inter-layer and in-plane charge transports. Moreover, the Drude weight in {\sigma}1a({\omega}), rather than the Drude weights in {\sigma}1b({\omega}) and {\sigma}1c({\omega}), decreases dramatically below Tc, which exhibits a highly anisotropic decrease in its Drude weight and thus suggests a strongly anisotropic reduction of the electronic kinetic energy in the WSM phase. Furthermore, below Tc, due to the in-plane anisotropic spectral-weight transfer from Drude component to high-energy region, the in-plane inter-band-absorption anisotropy increases remarkably around 770 meV, and has the largest value (~ 0.68) of normalized linear dichroism among the reported type-II WSMs. Our work sheds light on seeking new WSMs and developing novel photonic devices based on WSMs.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci