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1. Visualizing symmetry-breaking electronic orders in epitaxial Kagome magnet FeSn films

   https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-41831-4  

   Zhang, Huimin; Oli, Basu Dev; Zou, Qiang; Guo, Xu; Wang, Zhengfei; Li, Lian (December 2023, Nature Communications)

   Abstract Kagome lattice hosts a plethora of quantum states arising from the interplay of topology, spin-orbit coupling, and electron correlations. Here, we report symmetry-breaking electronic orders tunable by an applied magnetic field in a model Kagome magnet FeSn consisting of alternating stacks of two-dimensional Fe₃Sn Kagome and Sn₂honeycomb layers. On the Fe₃Sn layer terminated FeSn thin films epitaxially grown on SrTiO₃(111) substrates, we observe trimerization of the Kagome lattice using scanning tunneling microscopy/spectroscopy, breaking its six-fold rotational symmetry while preserving the translational symmetry. Such a trimerized Kagome lattice shows an energy-dependent contrast reversal in dI/dV maps, which is significantly enhanced by bound states induced by Sn vacancy defects. This trimerized Kagome lattice also exhibits stripe modulations that are energy-dependent and tunable by an applied in-plane magnetic field, indicating symmetry-breaking nematicity from the entangled magnetic and charge degrees of freedom in antiferromagnet FeSn. 

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2. Dynamics in the presence of local symmetry-breaking impurities

   https://doi.org/10.1103/p1cm-9z8n  

   Li, Yahui; Sala, Pablo; Pollmann, Frank; Moudgalya, Sanjay; Motrunich, Olexei (October 2025, Physical Review B)

   Continuous symmetries lead to universal slow relaxation of correlation functions in quantum many-body systems. In this work, we study how local symmetry-breaking impurities affect the dynamics of these correlation functions using Brownian quantum circuits, which we expect to apply to generic nonintegrable systems with the same symmetries. While explicitly breaking the symmetry is generally expected to lead to eventual restoration of full ergodicity, we find that approximately conserved quantities that survive under such circumstances can still induce slow relaxation. This can be understood using a super-Hamiltonian formulation, where low-lying excitations determine the late-time dynamics and exact ground states correspond to conserved quantities. We show that in one dimension, symmetry-breaking impurities modify diffusive and subdiffusive behaviors associated with $\mathrm{U}\left(1\right)$and dipole conservation at late times, e.g., by increasing power-law decay exponents of the decay of autocorrelation functions. This stems from the fact that for these symmetries, impurities are relevant in the renormalization-group sense, e.g., bulk impurities effectively disconnect the system, completely modifying both temporal and spatial correlations. On the other hand, for an impurity that disrupts strong Hilbert space fragmentation, the super-Hamiltonian only acquires an exponentially small gap, leading to prethermal plateaus in autocorrelation functions which extend for times that scale exponentially with the distance to the impurity. Overall, our approach systematically characterizes how symmetry-breaking impurities affect relaxation dynamics in symmetric systems. 

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3. Dynamics in the presence of local symmetry-breaking impurities

   Li, Yahui; Sala, Pablo; Pollmann, Frank; Moudgalya, Sanjay; Motrunich, Olexei I (May 2025, arXivorg)

   Continuous symmetries lead to universal slow relaxation of correlation functions in quantum many-body systems. In this work, we study how local symmetry-breaking impurities affect the dynamics of these correlation functions using Brownian quantum circuits, which we expect to apply to generic non-integrable systems with the same symmetries. While explicitly breaking the symmetry is generally expected to lead to eventual restoration of full ergodicity, we find that approximately conserved quantities that survive under such circumstances can still induce slow relaxation. This can be understood using a super-Hamiltonian formulation, where low-lying excitations determine the late-time dynamics and exact ground states correspond to conserved quantities. We show that in one dimension, symmetry-breaking impurities modify diffusive and subdiffusive behaviors associated with U(1) and dipole conservation at late-times, e.g., by increasing power-law decay exponents of the decay of autocorrelation functions. This stems from the fact that for these symmetries, impurities are relevant in the renormalization group sense, e.g., bulk impurities effectively disconnect the system, completely modifying both temporal and spatial correlations. On the other hand, for an impurity that disrupts strong Hilbert space fragmentation, the super-Hamiltonian only acquires an exponentially small gap, leading to prethermal plateaus in autocorrelation functions which extend for times that scale exponentially with the distance to the impurity. Overall, our approach systematically characterizes how symmetry-breaking impurities affect relaxation dynamics in symmetric systems. 

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4. Surface magnetism in Fe ₃ GeTe ₂ van der Waals ferromagnet

   https://doi.org/10.1088/2053-1583/adb43f  

   Tyson, Trevor A; Amarasinghe, Sandun; Abeykoon, A_M Milinda; Lalancette, Roger; Du, Kai; Fang, Xiaochen; Cheong, Sang-W; Al-Mahboob, Abdullah; Sadowski, Jerzy T (February 2025, 2D Materials)

   Abstract The surface magnetization of Fe₃GeTe₂was examined by low-energy electron microscopy (LEEM) using an off-normal incidence electron beam. We found that the 180° domain walls are of Bloch type. Temperature-dependent LEEM measurements yield a surface magnetization with a surface critical exponentβ1 = 0.79 ± 0.02. This result is consistent with surface magnetism in the 3D semi-infinite Heisenberg (β1 = 0.84 ± 0.01) or Ising (β1 = 0.78 ± 0.02) models, which is distinctly different from the bulk exponent (β= 0.34 ± 0.07). The measurements reveal the power of LEEM with a tilted beam to determine magnetic domain structure in quantum materials without the need for the use of spin-polarized electrons. Single crystal diffraction measurements reveal inversion symmetry-breaking weak peaks and yield space group P-6m2. This Fe site defect-derived loss of inversion symmetry enables the formation of skyrmions in this Fe₃GeTe₂crystal. 

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5. Examination of the structures, energetics, and vibrational frequencies of small sulfur‐containing prototypical dimers, (H ₂ S) ₂ and H ₂ O/H ₂ S

   https://doi.org/10.1002/jcc.25578  

   Dreux, Katelyn M.; Tschumper, Gregory S. (October 2018, Journal of Computational Chemistry)

   The optimized geometries, vibrational frequencies, and dissociation energies from MP2 and CCSD(T) computations with large correlation consistent basis sets are reported for (H₂S)₂and H₂O/H₂S. Anharmonic vibrational frequencies have also been computed with second‐order vibrational perturbation theory (VPT2). As such, the fundamental frequencies, overtones, and combination bands reported in this study should also provide a useful road map for future spectroscopic studies of the simple but important heterogeneous H₂O/H₂S dimer in which the hydrogen bond donor and acceptor can interchange, leading to two unique minima with very similar energies. Near the CCSD(T) complete basis set limit, the HOH⋯SH₂configuration (H₂O donor) lies only 0.2 kcal mol⁻¹below the HSH⋯OH₂structure (H₂S donor). When the zero‐point vibrational energy is included, however, the latter configuration becomes slightly lower in energy than the former by <0.1 kcal mol⁻¹. © 2018 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. 

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