Month: August 2026

Does the surface of a strongly correlated electron material have the same properties of the bulk? Dan’s new paper (https://lnkd.in/e_nD57-Q) shows from an incredibly detailed structural characterization of the surface of Ca₃Ru₂O₇ how distortions stabilize a surface Mott insulator – seems a common theme in ruthenates that they respond highly sensitively to tiny structural distortions. Great collaborative work within the Centre for Designer Quantum Materials (https://www.cdqm.uk) with the group of Phil King combining structural characterization by low energy electron diffraction with ARPES, STM and DFT calculations, and with samples from MPI Dresden.

Full reference:
Daniel Halliday, Izidor Benedičič, Andela Zivanovic, Masahiro Naritsuka, Brendan Edwards, Tommaso Antonelli, Naoki Kikugawa, Dmitry A. Sokolov, Craig Polley, Andrew P. Mackenzie, Georg Held, Phil D. C. King, and Peter Wahl, Correlated insulator at the surface of the polar metal Ca₃Ru₂O₇, Phys. Rev. Lett. 137, 096503 (2026).

How does the quasiparticle interference (QPI) of moiré-induced flat bands look like? Read Bruno’s preprint (https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.05648) about a new route to stabilise flat bands in emergent moiré periodicities, and how the flat bands look like in ARPES and QPI. Not only do we show QPI of the flat bands, but the manuscript introduces a new way to stabilise functional moiré heterostructures by exploiting CDW periodicities. Great collaboration with the group of Phil King and the Centre for Designer Quantum Materials (https://www.cdqm.uk/).