arXiv subjects

Zefang Wang

Publications and source records attributed to Zefang Wang.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Isotropic Superconductivity in Room-temperature Superconductor LaSc$_{2}$H$_{24}$

The discovery of LaSc$_{2}$H$_{24}$ represents a milestone in the quest for room-temperature superconductivity, yet the microscopic mechanism underlying its superior performance remains unclear. Through a comprehensive revisit of theoretical calculations, we uncover a pivotal transition from the anisotropic two-gap superconductivity of LaH$_{10}$ to the isotropic single-gap superconductivity in LaSc$_{2}$H$_{24}$ upon the introduction of scandium, thereby enhancing the superconducting critical temperature ($T_\mathrm{c}$). This enhancement is rooted in a critical dual role of Sc $3d$ electrons: i) the Sc-derived Jahn-Teller effect promotes hydrogen metallization via the elongation of specific interlayer H-H bonds and enhances electron-phonon coupling (EPC) through the softening of associated phonon modes; ii) Sc $3d$ electrons reconstruct the electronic structure into an MgB$_{2}$-like configuration, generating novel Sc-H-Sc $\sigma$- and $\pi$-bonding states with EPC strengths comparable to LaH$_{10}$. Crucially, the pronounced hybridization between Sc and the hydrogen cages effectively unifies these two contributions on the Fermi surface. This Sc-induced gap unification bridges the high-EPC H-H states with widespread Sc-H states, establishing an isotropic single-gap nature with a large overall EPC strength. Our findings identify this Sc-induced gap unification as the fundamental mechanism for achieving room-temperature superconductivity in LaSc$_{2}$H$_{24}$, offering a theoretical blueprint for the future design of superior superconducting hydrides.

cond-mat.supr-con↗

arXiv2025

Revisiting Phase Stability and Superconductivity in Ca-H Superhydrides with Anharmonic Effects

The prediction of superconductivity above 200 K in CaH$_6$ revolutionized research on hydrogen-rich superconductors, and subsequent experiments have verified this prediction, while unidentified peaks in XRD and the decrease in superconducting temperature upon decompression indicate that unresolved issues remain. In this work, we reconstructed the accurate temperature-pressure phase diagram of the Ca-H system and determined the stability ranges of its candidate superconducting phases by considering anharmonic effects. Our results demonstrate that type-I clathrate Ca$_8$H$_{46-delta}$ structures become thermodynamically stable at 0 K when anharmonic effects are considered. Notably, we found that the previously predicted CaH$_6$ phase achieves stability above 500 K, underscoring the significant role of temperature and anharmonic effects in stabilizing this intriguing high-pressure phase. Our findings offer insights into the structure and superconducting mechanisms of hydrides.

cond-mat.supr-con↗

arXiv2025

OBS-Diff: Accurate Pruning For Diffusion Models in One-Shot

Large-scale text-to-image diffusion models, while powerful, suffer from prohibitive computational cost. Existing one-shot network pruning methods can hardly be directly applied to them due to the iterative denoising nature of diffusion models. To bridge the gap, this paper presents OBS-Diff, a novel one-shot pruning framework that enables accurate and training-free compression of large-scale text-to-image diffusion models. Specifically, (i) OBS-Diff revitalizes the classic Optimal Brain Surgeon (OBS), adapting it to the complex architectures of modern diffusion models and supporting diverse pruning granularity, including unstructured, N:M semi-structured, and structured (MHA heads and FFN neurons) sparsity; (ii) To align the pruning criteria with the iterative dynamics of the diffusion process, by examining the problem from an error-accumulation perspective, we propose a novel timestep-aware Hessian construction that incorporates a logarithmic-decrease weighting scheme, assigning greater importance to earlier timesteps to mitigate potential error accumulation; (iii) Furthermore, a computationally efficient group-wise sequential pruning strategy is proposed to amortize the expensive calibration process. Extensive experiments show that OBS-Diff achieves state-of-the-art one-shot pruning for diffusion models, delivering inference acceleration with minimal degradation in visual quality.

cs.CV↗

arXiv2024

An Effective Information Theoretic Framework for Channel Pruning

Channel pruning is a promising method for accelerating and compressing convolutional neural networks. However, current pruning algorithms still remain unsolved problems that how to assign layer-wise pruning ratios properly and discard the least important channels with a convincing criterion. In this paper, we present a novel channel pruning approach via information theory and interpretability of neural networks. Specifically, we regard information entropy as the expected amount of information for convolutional layers. In addition, if we suppose a matrix as a system of linear equations, a higher-rank matrix represents there exist more solutions to it, which indicates more uncertainty. From the point of view of information theory, the rank can also describe the amount of information. In a neural network, considering the rank and entropy as two information indicators of convolutional layers, we propose a fusion function to reach a compromise of them, where the fusion results are defined as ``information concentration''. When pre-defining layer-wise pruning ratios, we employ the information concentration as a reference instead of heuristic and engineering tuning to provide a more interpretable solution. Moreover, we leverage Shapley values, which are a potent tool in the interpretability of neural networks, to evaluate the channel contributions and discard the least important channels for model compression while maintaining its performance. Extensive experiments demonstrate the effectiveness and promising performance of our method. For example, our method improves the accuracy by 0.21% when reducing 45.5% FLOPs and removing 40.3% parameters for ResNet-56 on CIFAR-10. Moreover, our method obtains loss in Top-1/Top-5 accuracies of 0.43%/0.11% by reducing 41.6% FLOPs and removing 35.0% parameters for ResNet-50 on ImageNet.

cs.IT↗

arXiv2022

EViT: Privacy-Preserving Image Retrieval via Encrypted Vision Transformer in Cloud Computing

Image retrieval systems help users to browse and search among extensive images in real-time. With the rise of cloud computing, retrieval tasks are usually outsourced to cloud servers. However, the cloud scenario brings a daunting challenge of privacy protection as cloud servers cannot be fully trusted. To this end, image-encryption-based privacy-preserving image retrieval schemes have been developed, which first extract features from cipher-images, and then build retrieval models based on these features. Yet, most existing approaches extract shallow features and design trivial retrieval models, resulting in insufficient expressiveness for the cipher-images. In this paper, we propose a novel paradigm named Encrypted Vision Transformer (EViT), which advances the discriminative representations capability of cipher-images. First, in order to capture comprehensive ruled information, we extract multi-level local length sequence and global Huffman-code frequency features from the cipher-images which are encrypted by stream cipher during JPEG compression process. Second, we design the Vision Transformer-based retrieval model to couple with the multi-level features, and propose two adaptive data augmentation methods to improve representation power of the retrieval model. Our proposal can be easily adapted to unsupervised and supervised settings via self-supervised contrastive learning manner. Extensive experiments reveal that EViT achieves both excellent encryption and retrieval performance, outperforming current schemes in terms of retrieval accuracy by large margins while protecting image privacy effectively. Code is publicly available at \url{https://github.com/onlinehuazai/EViT}.

cs.CV↗

arXiv2021

Strongly correlated excitonic insulator in atomic double layers

Excitonic insulators (EI) arise from the formation of bound electron-hole pairs (excitons) in semiconductors and provide a solid-state platform for quantum many-boson physics. Strong exciton-exciton repulsion is expected to stabilize condensed superfluid and crystalline phases by suppressing both density and phase fluctuations. Although spectroscopic signatures of EIs have been reported, conclusive evidence for strongly correlated EI states has remained elusive. Here, we demonstrate a strongly correlated spatially indirect two-dimensional (2D) EI ground state formed in transition metal dichalcogenide (TMD) semiconductor double layers. An equilibrium interlayer exciton fluid is formed when the bias voltage applied between the two electrically isolated TMD layers, is tuned to a range that populates bound electron-hole pairs, but not free electrons or holes. Capacitance measurements show that the fluid is exciton-compressible but charge-incompressible - direct thermodynamic evidence of the EI. The fluid is also strongly correlated with a dimensionless exciton coupling constant exceeding 10. We further construct an exciton phase diagram that reveals both the Mott transition and interaction-stabilized quasi-condensation. Our experiment paves the path for realizing the exotic quantum phases of excitons, as well as multi-terminal exciton circuitry for applications.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2021

Evidence of high-temperature exciton condensation in 2D atomic double layers

A Bose-Einstein condensate is the ground state of a dilute gas of bosons, such as atoms cooled to temperatures close to absolute zero. With much smaller mass, excitons (bound electron-hole pairs) are expected to condense at significantly higher temperatures. Here we study electrically generated interlayer excitons in MoSe2/WSe2 atomic double layers with density up to 10^12 cm-2. The interlayer tunneling current depends only on exciton density, indicative of correlated electron-hole pair tunneling. Strong electroluminescence (EL) arises when a hole tunnels from WSe2 to recombine with electron in MoSe2. We observe a critical threshold dependence of the EL intensity on exciton density, accompanied by a super-Poissonian photon statistics near threshold, and a large EL enhancement peaked narrowly at equal electron-hole densities. The phenomenon persists above 100 K, which is consistent with the predicted critical condensation temperature. Our study provides compelling evidence for interlayer exciton condensation in two-dimensional atomic double layers and opens up exciting opportunities for exploring condensate-based optoelectronics and exciton-mediated high-temperature superconductivity.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2020

Spectral and spatial isolation of single WSe$_2$ quantum emitters using hexagonal boron nitride wrinkles

Monolayer WSe$_2$ hosts bright single-photon emitters. Because of its compliance, monolayer WSe$_2$ conforms to patterned substrates without breaking, thus creating the potential for large local strain, which is one activation mechanism of its intrinsic quantum emitters. Here, we report an approach to creating spatially and spectrally isolated quantum emitters from WSe$_2$ monolayers with few or no detrimental sources of emission. We show that a bilayer of hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) and WSe$_2$ placed on a nanostructured substrate can be used to create and shape wrinkles that communicate local strain to the WSe$_2$, thus creating quantum emitters that are isolated from substrate features. We compare quantum emitters created directly on top of substrate features with quantum emitters forming along wrinkles and find that the spectra of the latter consist of mainly a single peak and a low background fluorescence. We also discuss possible approaches to controlling emitter position along hBN wrinkles.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2019

Pressure-controlled interlayer magnetism in atomically thin CrI3

Stacking order can significantly influence the physical properties of two-dimensional (2D) van der Waals materials. The recent isolation of atomically thin magnetic materials opens the door for control and design of magnetism via stacking order. Here we apply hydrostatic pressure up to 2 GPa to modify the stacking order in a prototype van der Waals magnetic insulator CrI3. We observe an irreversible interlayer antiferromagnetic (AF) to ferromagnetic (FM) transition in atomically thin CrI3 by magnetic circular dichroism and electron tunneling measurements. The effect is accompanied by a monoclinic to a rhombohedral stacking order change characterized by polarized Raman spectroscopy. Before the structural change, the interlayer AF coupling energy can be tuned up by nearly 100% by pressure. Our experiment reveals interlayer FM coupling, which is the established ground state in bulk CrI3, but never observed in native exfoliated thin films. The observed correlation between the magnetic ground state and the stacking order is in good agreement with first principles calculations and suggests a route towards nanoscale magnetic textures by moiré engineering.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2019

Probing Many-Body Interactions in Monolayer Transition-Metal Dichalcogenides

Many-body interactions in monolayer transition-metal dichalcogenides are strongly affected by their unique band structure. We study these interactions by measuring the energy shift of neutral excitons (bound electron-hole pairs) in gated WSe$_2$ and MoSe$_2$. Surprisingly, while the blueshift of the neutral exciton, $X^0$, in electron-doped samples can be more than 10~meV, the blueshift in hole-doped samples is nearly absent. Taking into account dynamical screening and local-field effects, we present a transparent and analytical model that elucidates the crucial role played by intervalley plasmons in electron-doped conditions. The energy shift of $X^0$ as a function of charge density is computed showing agreement with experiment, where the renormalization of $X^0$ by intervalley plasmons yields a stronger blueshift in MoSe$_2$ than in WSe$_2$ due to differences in their band ordering.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2018

An unusual continuous paramagnetic-limited superconducting phase transition in 2D NbSe$_2$

Time reversal and spatial inversion are two key symmetries for conventional Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BCS) superconductivity. Breaking inversion symmetry can lead to mixed-parity Cooper pairing and unconventional superconducting properties. Two-dimensional (2D) NbSe$_2$ has emerged as a new non-centrosymmetric superconductor with the unique out-of-plane or Ising spin-orbit coupling (SOC). Here, we report the observation of an unusual continuous paramagnetic-limited superconductor-normal metal transition in 2D NbSe$_2$. Using tunneling spectroscopy under high in-plane magnetic fields, we observe a continuous closing of the superconducting gap at the upper critical field at low temperatures, in stark contrast to the abrupt first-order transition observed in BCS thin film superconductors. The paramagnetic-limited continuous transition arises from a large spin susceptibility of the superconducting phase due to the Ising SOC. The result is further supported by self-consistent mean-field calculations based on the ab initio band structure of 2D NbSe$_2$. Our findings establish 2D NbSe$_2$ as a promising platform for exploring novel spin-dependent superconducting phenomena and device concepts, such as equal-spin Andreev reflection and topological superconductivity.

cond-mat.supr-con↗

arXiv2018

Spin transistor built on 2D van der Waals heterostructures

Spin transistors (whose on-off operation is achieved by electric-field-controlled spin orientation 1), if realized, can revolutionize modern electronics through the implementation of a faster and a more energy-efficient performance as well as non-volatile data storage 2, 3. The original proposal by Datta and Das 1 that relies on electric-field-controlled spin precession in a semiconductor channel faces significant challenges including inefficient spin injection, spin relaxation and spread of the spin precession angle 4, 5. Recent demonstration of electric-field switching of magnetic order 6-8 and spin filtering 9-12 in two-dimensional magnetic insulator CrI3 has inspired a new operational principle for spin transistors. Here we demonstrate spin field-effect transistors based on dual-gated graphene/CrI3 tunnel junctions. These devices show an ambipolar transistor behavior and tunnel magnetoresistance widely tunable by gating when the CrI3 magnetic tunnel barrier undergoes an antiferromagnetic-ferromagnetic spin-flip transition. Under a constant magnetic bias in the vicinity of the spin-flip transition, the gate voltage can repeatedly alter the device between a high and a low conductance state with a large hysteresis. This new spin transistor concept based on the electric-field-controlled spin-flip transition in the magnetic tunnel barrier is immune to interface imperfections and allows spin injection, control and detection in a single device.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2018

Controlling magnetism in 2D CrI3 by electrostatic doping

The atomic thickness of two-dimensional (2D) materials provides a unique opportunity to control material properties and engineer new functionalities by electrostatic doping. Electrostatic doping has been demonstrated to tune the electrical and optical properties of 2D materials in a wide range, as well as to drive the electronic phase transitions. The recent discovery of atomically thin magnetic insulators has opened up the prospect of electrical control of magnetism and new devices with unprecedented performance. Here we demonstrate control of the magnetic properties of monolayer and bilayer CrI3 by electrostatic doping using a dual-gate field-effect device structure. In monolayer CrI3, doping significantly modifies the saturation magnetization, coercive force and Curie temperature, showing strengthened (weakened) magnetic order with hole (electron) doping. Remarkably, in bilayer CrI3 doping drastically changes the interlayer magnetic order, causing a transition from an antiferromagnetic ground state in the pristine form to a ferromagnetic ground state above a critical electron density. The result reveals a strongly doping-dependent interlayer exchange coupling, which enables robust switching of magnetization in bilayer CrI3 by small gate voltages.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2017

Electrical tuning of layer-polarized exciton gases in WSe2 bilayers

Van der Waals heterostructures formed by stacking two-dimensional atomic crystals are a unique platform for exploring new phenomena and functionalities. Interlayer excitons, bound states of spatially separated electron-hole pairs in van der Waals heterostructures, have demonstrated potential for rich valley physics and optoelectronics applications, and been proposed to facilitate high-temperature superfluidity. Here, we demonstrate highly tunable layer-polarized excitons by an out-of-plane electric field in homo-bilayers of transition metal dichalcogenides. Continuous tuning from negative to positive layer polarity has been achieved, which is not possible in hetero-bilayers due to the presence of large built-in interfacial electric fields. A large linear field-induced redshift up to ~ 100 meV has been observed in the exciton resonance energy. The Stark effect is accompanied by an enhancement of the exciton recombination lifetime by more than two orders of magnitude to > 20 ns. The long recombination lifetime has allowed the creation of a layer-polarized exciton gas with density as large as 1.2*10^11 cm^-2 by moderate continuous-wave optical pumping. Our results have paved the way for realization of degenerate exciton gases in atomically thin semiconductors.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2017

Valley Magnetoelectricity in Single-Layer MoS2

Magnetoelectric (ME) effect, the phenomenon of inducing magnetization by application of an electric field or vice versa, holds great promise for magnetic sensing and switching applications. Studies of the ME effect have so far focused on the control of the electron spin degree of freedom (DOF) in materials such as multiferroics and conventional semiconductors. Here, we report a new form of the ME effect based on the valley DOF in two-dimensional (2D) Dirac materials. By breaking the three-fold rotational symmetry in single-layer MoS2 via a uniaxial stress, we have demonstrated the pure electrical generation of valley magnetization in this material, and its direct imaging by Kerr rotation microscopy. The observed out-of-plane magnetization is independent of in-plane magnetic field, linearly proportional to the in-plane current density, and optimized when the current is orthogonal to the strain-induced piezoelectric field. These results are fully consistent with a theoretical model of valley magnetoelectricity driven by Berry curvature effects. Furthermore, the effect persists at room temperature, opening possibilities for practical valleytronic devices.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2017

Strongly interaction-enhanced valley magnetic response in monolayer WSe2

Coulomb interaction between electrons lies at the heart of magnetism in solids. In contrast to conventional two-dimensional (2D) systems, electrons in monolayer transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) possess coupled spin and valley degrees of freedom by the spin-orbit interaction. The electrons are also strongly interacting even in the high-density regime because of the weak dielectric screening in two dimensions and a large band mass. The combination of these properties presents a unique platform for exploring spin and valley magnetism in 2D electron liquids. Here we report an observation by magneto-photoluminescence spectroscopy of a nonlinear valley Zeeman effect, correlated with an over fourfold enhancement in the exciton g-factor in monolayer WSe2. The effect occurs when the Fermi level crosses the spin-split upper conduction band, corresponding to a change of the spin-valley degeneracy from 2 to 4. The enhancement increases, shows no sign of saturation as the sample temperature decreases. Our result suggests the possibility of rich many-body ground states in monolayer TMDs with multiple internal degrees of freedom.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2017

Probing the spin-polarized electronic band structure in monolayer transition metal dichalcogenides by optical spectroscopy

We study the electronic band structure in the K/K' valleys of the Brillouin zone of monolayer WSe2 and MoSe2 by optical reflection and photoluminescence spectroscopy on dual-gated field-effect devices. Our experiment reveals the distinct spin polarization in the conduction bands of these compounds by a systematic study of the doping dependence of the A and B excitonic resonances. Electrons in the highest-energy valence band and the lowest-energy conduction band have antiparallel spins in monolayer WSe2, and parallel spins in monolayer MoSe2. The spin splitting is determined to be hundreds of meV for the valence bands and tens of meV for the conduction bands, which are in good agreement with first principles calculations. These values also suggest that both n- and p-type WSe2 and MoSe2 can be relevant for spin- and valley-based applications

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2017

Valley-spin polarized Landau levels in a monolayer semiconductor

Electrons in monolayer transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) possess both the valley and spin degree of freedom. These internal quantum degrees of freedom have provided an ideal laboratory for exploring both new physical phenomena and electronics and photonics applications. Valley- and spin-dependent optical and electrical properties, originated from Berry curvature effects, have been recently demonstrated. Such Berry curvature effects, together with strong spin-orbit interactions, can further generate unconventional Landau levels (LLs) under a perpendicular magnetic field that support valley- and spinpolarized chiral edge states in the quantum Hall regime. The unique LL structure, however, has not been demonstrated in TMDs. Here we report the observation of fully valley- and spin-polarized LLs in high-quality WSe2 monolayers achieved using a van der Waals heterostructure device platform. Handedness-resolved optical reflection spectroscopy has been applied to probe the inter-LL transitions at individual valleys. The LL structure has been constructed. A doping-induced mass renormalization driven by the strong Coulomb interactions has also been observed. Our results open the door for studies of the unconventional LL physics and quantum Hall effect in monolayer TMDs.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗