Fast STM of emergent states

  • date:

    Dienstag, 28.10.2025, 16.00 Uhr

  • speaker:

    Prof. Dragan Mihailovic
    Jožef Stefan Institute Ljubljana, Slowenien

  • Abstract: The self-assembly of matter in the aftermath of a phase transition results in emergent states that are the origin of everything around us. Here we investigate emergent quasiparticle excitations in 1T-TaS2 in which the electrons - due to their strong tendency of localization form a variety of lively metastable mesoscopic states. Using fast STM and multiple STM tip experiments we investigate the fundamental mechanisms lea- ding to the formation of a Wigner crystal domain state that supports localised mesosco- pic quasiparticle excitations. In particular, two-level system behaviour of the emergent quasiparticle state points to a new class of topologically protected local vertex excitati- ons. We speculate that such excitations can be quite common in complex adaptive mat- ter that is not ideally ordered. The implications for various kinds of quantum devices are evident.