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Abstract Flat band systems are currently under intense investigation in quantum materials, optical lattices, and metamaterials. These efforts are motivated by potential realization of strongly correlated phenomena enabled by frustration-induced flat band dispersions; identification of candidate platforms plays an important role in these efforts. Here, we develop a high-throughput materials search for bulk crystalline flat bands by automated construction of uniform-hopping near-neighbor tight-binding models. We show that this approach captures many of the essential features relevant to identifying flat band lattice motifs in candidate materials in a computationally inexpensive manner, and is of use to identify systems for further detailed investigation as well as theoretical and metamaterials studies of model systems. We apply this algorithm to 139,367 materials in the Materials Project database and identify 63,076 materials that host at least one flat band elemental sublattice. We further categorize these candidate systems into at least 31,635 unique flat band crystal nets and identify candidates of interest from both lattice and band structure perspectives. This work expands the number of known flat band lattices that exist in physically realizable crystal structures and classifies the majority of these systems by the underlying lattice, providing additional insights for familiar (e.g., kagome, pyrochlore, Lieb, and dice) as well as previously unknown motifs. 

Flat-band materials such as the kagome metals or moiré superlattices are of intense current interest. Flat bands can result from the electron motion on numerous (special) lattices and usually exhibit topological properties. Their reduced bandwidth proportionally enhances the effect of Coulomb interaction, even when the absolute magnitude of the latter is relatively small. Seemingly unrelated to these materials is the large family of strongly correlated electron systems, which include the heavy-fermion compounds, and cuprate and pnictide superconductors. In addition to itinerant electrons from large, strongly overlapping orbitals, they frequently contain electrons from more localized orbitals, which are subject to a large Coulomb interaction. The question then arises as to what commonality in the physical properties and microscopic physics, if any, exists between these two broad categories of materials. A rapidly increasing body of strikingly similar phenomena across the different platforms — from electronic localization–delocalization transitions to strange-metal behaviour and unconventional superconductivity — suggests that similar underlying principles could be at play. Indeed, it has recently been suggested that flat-band physics can be understood in terms of Kondo physics. Inversely, the concept of electronic topology from lattice symmetry, which is fundamental in flat-band systems, is enriching the field of strongly correlated electron systems, in which correlation-driven topological phases are increasingly being investigated. In this Perspective article, we elucidate this connection, survey the new opportunities for cross-fertilization across platforms and assess the prospect for new insights that may be gained into correlation physics and its intersection with electronic topology. 

The propagation of spin waves in magnetically ordered systems has emerged as a potential means to shuttle quantum information over large distances. Conventionally, the arrival time of a spin wavepacket at a distance,d, is assumed to be determined by its group velocity,v_g. Here, we report time-resolved optical measurements of wavepacket propagation in the Kagome ferromagnet Fe₃Sn₂that demonstrate the arrival of spin information at times significantly less thand/v_g. We show that this spin wave “precursor” originates from the interaction of light with the unusual spectrum of magnetostatic modes in Fe₃Sn₂. Related effects may have far-reaching consequences toward realizing long-range, ultrafast spin wave transport in both ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic systems.