Kavli Affiliate: James Analytis| Summary:Understanding if low-energy excitations can remain itinerant in the presence of strong disorder remains a central challenge in frustrated quantum magnets, where disorder is generally expected to localize excitations through Anderson-like mechanisms. Here we report the emergence of charge-neutral itinerant excitations in a van der Waals compound Cr$_3$Se$_2$Br$_5$, a strongly disordered […]

Kavli Affiliate: Joel Moore | Summary:Periodically driven quantum many-body systems can spontaneously break discrete time-translation symmetry, realizing discrete time crystals. To date, both experimental and theoretical efforts have largely focused on the simplest case of spontaneous period-doubling in $mathbbZ_2$ discrete time crystals realized with qubits. This owes, in part, to the challenge of stabilizing eigenstate […]

Kavli Affiliate: Michael Crommie | Summary:We directly visualize a two-dimensional anisotropic Wigner crystal and its quantum melting in monolayer 1T-ReSe2 using non-invasive scanning tunnelling microscopy. In crystals with anisotropic effective mass, an electron’s quantum wavefunction becomes elongated along the light-mass direction to reduce kinetic energy. At low electron density, such anisotropic electrons are predicted to […]

Kavli Affiliate: James Analytis| Summary:Control of light polarization and propagation in sub-wavelength architectures is foundational to nanophotonic technologies. A frontier direction is to leverage strong optical spin-orbit interactions to realize polarization-selective light steering, known as the photonic spin Hall effect. In this context, hyperbolic plasmon polaritons (HPPs) are of particular interest as they offer large […]

Kavli Affiliate: Joel Moore | Summary:The emergence of colossal magnetoresistance in a new generation of Eu$^2+$-based antiferromagnets is intriguing given stark contrasts to the archetypal perovskite manganites and doped Eu-chalcogenides. In this study the thermal conductivity and magnetostriction of Eu$_5$Sn$_2$As$_6$ — one such representative — have been measured to better understand the role of the […]

Kavli Affiliate: James Analytis| Summary:The ever-increasing demand for fast, reliable, and energy-efficient information storage continues to push magnetic memory technologies toward their fundamental limits. Conventional scaling strategies, which rely on reducing bit size, inevitably run into the "magnetic recording trilemma," where signal-to-noise ratio, thermal stability, and writability cannot all be optimized simultaneously. Heat-assisted magnetic recording […]

Kavli Affiliate: Archana Raja| Summary:Moiré superlattices formed by transition metal dichalcogenide (TMD) heterobilayers provide a versatile platform for studying strongly correlated electronic, excitonic, and topological phenomena in solids. In particular, angle-aligned MoSe$_2$/WS$_2$ heterobilayers, which have a Type-I band alignment at zero vertical electric field, host rich correlated spin and charge physics. Here, combining large-scale first-principles […]

Kavli Affiliate: Paul Alivisatos | Summary:Colloidal quantum dots (QDs) and their thin-films are increasingly used in electronic and photonic devices replacing traditional bulk semiconductors. However, thermal properties of the QDs are comparatively underexplored relative to device development efforts. This study shows the use of time-resolved X-ray diffraction as a contact-free method to probe the thermal […]

Kavli Affiliate: Gerbrand Ceder| Summary:Electron microscopy techniques are instrumental in the characterization of energy storage materials, with atomic resolution images providing the detailed structural features that are needed to understand their properties. Atomically resolved electron microscopy techniques have been routinely used to study the microstructure in high performing Mn-based oxide cathodes, which often contain spinel-like […]

Kavli Affiliate: Carlos Bustamante | Summary:Following our recent numerical study [arXiv:2601.16299 (2026)], we investigate vibrational excitation induced by transient optical driving in molecular ensembles strongly coupled to a cavity mode using the field-driven Holstein–Tavis–Cummings model. We analyze how pulsed excitation redistributes energy among electronic, photonic, and vibrational degrees of freedom in molecular polaritons. Vibrational dynamics […]