arXiv subjects

Yuhang Hou

Publications and source records attributed to Yuhang Hou.

4 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2025

Electronic Phonons in a Moiré Electron Crystal

Collective quantum phenomena, such as the excitation of composite fermions1, spin waves2, and exciton condensation3,4, can emerge in strongly correlated systems like the fractional quantum Hall states5, spin liquids6, or excitonic insulators7. Two-dimensional (2D) moiré superlattices have emerged as a powerful platform for exploring such correlated phases and their associated collective excitations8,9. Specifically, electron crystals stabilized by longrange Coulomb interactions may host collective vibrational excitations emerging from electron correlations10, termed electronic phonons, which are fundamentally distinct from atomic lattice phonons. Despite theoretical prediction of their existence in moiré electron crystals11, direct experimental evidence has remained elusive. Here we report the observation of electronic phonons in the Mott insulating and stripe phases of a WS2/WSe2 moiré superlattice, achieved through light scattering measurements. The phonon energies, temperature and filling factor dependencies, along with theoretical modeling, corroborate their origin as collective vibrations of a correlated electron crystal. Polarization-resolved measurements further indicate rotational symmetry breaking in the Mott state. Notably, these electronic phonons exhibit strong tunability in energy, intensity, and polarization under external electric or magnetic fields, highlighting rich and controllable lattice dynamics of the electron crystal. These findings provide direct spectroscopic evidence for the electronic crystalline nature of correlated phases, opening avenues for probing and manipulating collective excitations in correlated electron systems.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2024

Wave function forms of interlayer excitons in bilayer transition metal dichalcogenides

We numerically solve the electron-hole relative wave function of interlayer excitons in bilayer transition metal dichalcogenides, taking into account the screening effects from both the constituent transition metal dichalcogenides layers and the surrounding dielectric environment. We find that the wave function of the 1s ground state is close to the gaussian form, rather than the well-known exponential decay form of the two-dimensional hydrogen model. Meanwhile, the 2s state has an energy $E_{2s}$ significantly higher than $E_{2p}$ of the 2p state, but becomes close to $E_{3d}$ of the 3d state with $E_{2s}-E_{2p} \approx E_{3d}-E_{2p} \approx E_{2p}-E_{1s}$ under a large interlayer separation and weak environmental screening. Under general conditions, the solved 1s, 2p and 3d wave functions can be fit nearly perfectly by simple analytic forms which smoothly cross from gaussian to exponential decay. These analytic forms can facilitate the accurate evaluation of various exciton quantities for device applications.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2024

Dipolar interactions enhanced by two-dimensional dielectric screening in few-layer van der Waals structures

We theoretically examined how the dielectric screening of two-dimensional layered materials affects the dipolar interaction between interlayer excitons in few-layer van der Waals structures. Our analysis indicates that the dipolar interaction is largely enhanced by two-dimensional dielectric screening at an inter-exciton separation of several nanometers or larger. The underlying mechanism can be attributed to the induced-charge densities in layered materials, which give rise to induced-dipole densities at large distances with directions parallel to that of the interlayer exciton. The interaction between quadrupolar excitons in trilayer structures are found to be enhanced even larger, with a magnitude one to two orders stronger than that without 2D dielectric screening. The strengths of these dipolar and quadrupolar interactions can be further tuned by engineering the dielectric environment.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2019

Asymptotic Analysis Of Determinant Of Discrete Laplacian

In this paper, we study the relation between the partition function of the free scalar field theory on hypercubes with boundary conditions and asymptotics of discrete partition functions on a sequence of "lattices" which approximate the hypercube as the mesh approaches to zero. More precisely, we show that the logarithm of the zeta regularized determinant of Laplacian on the hypercube with Dirichlet boundary condition appears as the constant term in the asymptotic expansion of the log-determinant of the discrete Laplacian up to an explicitly computable constant. We also investigate similar problems for the massive Laplacian on tori.

math-ph↗