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Creators/Authors contains: "Zhang, Ya-Hui"

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  1. Free, publicly-accessible full text available January 30, 2026
  2. The advent of moiré platforms for engineered quantum matter has led to discoveries of integer and fractional quantum anomalous Hall effects, with predictions for correlation-driven topological states based on electron crystallization. Here, we report an array of trivial and topological insulators formed in a moiré lattice of rhomobohedral pentalayer graphene (R5G). At a doping of one electron per moiré unit cell ( ν = 1 ), we see a correlated insulator with a Chern number that can be tuned between C = 0 and + 1 by an electric displacement field. This is accompanied by a series of additional Chern insulators with C = + 1 originating from fractional fillings of the moiré lattice— ν = 1 / 4 , 1 / 3 , and 2 / 3 —associated with the formation of moiré-driven topological electronic crystals. At ν = 2 / 3 the system exhibits an integer quantum anomalous Hall effect at zero magnetic field, but further develops hints of an incipient C = 2 / 3 fractional Chern insulator in a modest field. Our results establish moiré R5G as a fertile platform for studying the competition and potential intertwining of integer and fractional Chern insulators. Published by the American Physical Society2025 
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    Free, publicly-accessible full text available February 1, 2026
  3. Free, publicly-accessible full text available December 1, 2025
  4. Heavy fermion criticality has been a long-standing problem in condensed matter physics. Here we study a one-dimensional Kondo lattice model through numerical simulation and observe signatures of local criticality. We vary the Kondo couplingJ_K J K at fixed doping x. At large positiveJ_K J K , we confirm the expected conventional Luttinger liquid phase with2k_F=\frac{1+x}{2} 2 k F = 1 + x 2 (in units of2\pi 2 π ), an analogue of the heavy Fermi liquid (HFL) in the higher dimension. In theJ_K ≤ 0 J K 0 side, our simulation finds the existence of a fractional Luttinger liquid (LL\star ) phase with2k_F=\frac{x}{2} 2 k F = x 2 , accompanied by a gapless spin mode originating from localized spin moments, which serves as an analogue of the fractional Fermi liquid (FL\star ) phase in higher dimensions. The LL\star phase becomes unstable and transitions to a spin-gapped Luther-Emery (LE) liquid phase at small positiveJ_K J K . Then we mainly focus on the “critical regime” between the LE phase and the LL phase. Approaching the critical point from the spin-gapped LE phase, we often find that the spin gap vanishes continuously, while the spin-spin correlation length in real space stays finite and small. For a certain range of doping, in a point (or narrow region) ofJ_K J K , the dynamical spin structure factor obtained through the time-evolving block decimation (TEBD) simulation shows dispersion-less spin fluctuations in a finite range of momentum space above a small energy scale (around0.035 J 0.035 J ) that is limited by the TEBD accuracy. All of these results are unexpected for a regular gapless phase (or critical point) described by conformal field theory (CFT). Instead, they are more consistent with exotic ultra-local criticality with an infinite dynamical exponentz=+ z = + . The numerical discovery here may have important implications on our general theoretical understanding of the strange metals in heavy fermion systems. Lastly, we propose to simulate the model in a bilayer optical lattice with a potential difference. 
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