Yinghai Xu | Searcharxiv

arXiv2025

Emergence of Topological Electron Crystals in Bilayer Graphene--Mott Insulator Heterostructures

The interplay between strong electron correlation and band topology offers a playground for discovering exotic quantum phases. Here, we predict the emergence of topological electron crystals in a charge-transfer bilayer graphene-Mott insulator heterostructure. In this system, interlayer charge transfer induces a charge-neutral electron-hole bilayer with strong mass asymmetry. While the extreme dilute limit favors a classical triangular dipolar Wigner crystal, we show that increasing the carrier density triggers a critical competition between the Coulomb interaction and the underlying topological band structure of bilayer graphene. This interplay destabilizes the triangular dipolar Wigner crystal and instead stabilizes intrinsic quantum electron crystals with spontaneously formed honeycomb and kagome geometries. Crucially, these new phases can host distinct topological responses including the quantum anomalous and quantum spin Hall effects, which inherit the nonlocal quantum geometry of the bilayer graphene wave functions. Our results establish this artificial heterostructure as a highly tunable platform for mimicking two-dimensional topological solids in a single device.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2025

Transdimensional anomalous Hall effect in rhombohedral thin graphite

Anomalous Hall effect (AHE), occurring in materials with broken time-reversal symmetry, epitomizes the intricate interplay between magnetic order and orbital motions of electrons[1-4]. In two dimensional (2D) systems, AHE is always coupled with out-of-plane orbital magnetization associated in-plane chiral orbital motions. In three dimensional (3D) systems, carriers can tunnel or scatter along the third dimension within the vertical mean free path lz. When sample thickness far exceeds lz, scattering disrupts coherent out-of-plane motion, making 3D AHE effectively a thickness-averaged 2D counterpart[4] -- still governed by out-of-plane orbital magnetization arising from in-plane orbital motions. Here, we explore an uncharted regime where the sample thickness is much larger than the atomic layer thickness yet smaller than or comparable to lz. In such "transdimensional" regime, carriers can sustain coherent orbital motions both within and out of the 2D plane, leading to a fundamentally new type of AHE that couples both out-of-plane and in-plane orbital magnetizations. We report the first observation of such phenomenon -- transdimensional AHE (TDAHE) -- in electrostatically gated rhombohedral ennealayer graphene. This state emerges from a peculiar metallic phase that spontaneously breaks time-reversal, mirror and rotational symmetries driven by electron-electron interactions. Such TDAHE manifests as concurrent out-of-plane and in-plane Hall resistance hysteresis, controlled by external magnetic fields along either direction. Our findings unveils a new class of AHE, opening an unexplored paradigm for correlated and topological physics in transdimensional systems.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗