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Two-dimensional (2D) magnetism in van der Waals (vdW) atomic crystals and moir\'e superlattices has emerged as a topic of tremendous interest in the fields of condensed matter physics and materials science within the past half-decade since its first experimental discovery in 2016 - 2017. It has not only served as a powerful platform for investigating phase transitions in the 2D limit and exploring new phases of matter, but also provided new opportunities for applications in microelectronics, spintronics, magnonics, optomagnetics, and so on. Despite the flourishing developments in 2D magnetism over this short period of time, further efforts are welcome in multiple forefronts of 2D magnetism research for achieving the ultimate goal of routinely implementing 2D magnets as quantum electronic components. In this review article, we will start with basic concepts and properties of 2D magnetism, followed by a brief overview of historical efforts in 2D magnetism research and then a comprehensive review of vdW material-based 2D magnetism. We will conclude with discussions on potential future research directions for this growing field of 2D vdW magnetism., Comment: 50 pages, 31 figures

Broken symmetries and electronic topology are nicely manifested together in the second order nonlinear optical responses from topologically nontrivial materials. While second order nonlinear optical effects from the electric dipole (ED) contribution have been extensively explored in polar Weyl semimetals (WSMs) with broken spatial inversion (SI) symmetry, they are rarely studied in centrosymmetric magnetic WSMs with broken time reversal (TR) symmetry due to complete suppression of the ED contribution. Here, we report experimental demonstration of optical second harmonic generation (SHG) in a magnetic WSM Co$_{3}$Sn$_{2}$S$_{2}$ from the electric quadrupole (EQ) contribution. By tracking the temperature dependence of the rotation anisotropy (RA) of SHG, we capture two magnetic phase transitions, with both the SHG intensity increasing and its RA pattern rotating at $T_{C,1}$=175K and $T_{C,2}$=120K subsequently. The fitted critical exponents for the SHG intensity and RA orientation near $T_{C,1}$ and $T_{C,2}$ suggest that the magnetic phase at $T_{C,1}$ is a 3D Ising-type out-of-plane ferromagnetism while the other at $T_{C,2}$ is a 3D XY-type all-in-all-out in-plane antiferromagnetism. Our results show the success of detection and exploration of EQ SHG in a centrosymmetric magnetic WSM, and hence open the pathway towards the future investigation of its tie to the band topology., Comment: 19 pages, 4 figures

In this work, we study Metal-Insulator transition in a holographic model containing an interaction between the order parameter and charge-carrier density. It turns out that the impurity density of this model can drive the phase transition whose ordered phase corresponds to the insulating phase. The temperature behavior of DC conductivity distinguishes the insulating phase from the metal phase. We confirm this behavior by a numerical method and an analytic calculation. As a byproduct, we show the existence of a `quantum phase transition' supported by the Breitenlohner-Freedman bound argument., Comment: 22 pages, 21 figures

The interplay between a multitude of electronic, spin, and lattice degrees of freedom underlies the complex phase diagrams of quantum materials. Layer stacking in van der Waals (vdW) heterostructures is responsible for exotic electronic and magnetic properties, which inspires stacking control of two-dimensional magnetism. Beyond the interplay between stacking order and interlayer magnetism, we discover a spin-shear coupling mechanism in which a subtle shear of the atomic layers can have a profound effect on the intralayer magnetic order in a family of vdW antiferromagnets. Using time-resolved x-ray diffraction and optical linear dichroism measurements, interlayer shear is identified as the primary structural degree of freedom that couples with magnetic order. The recovery times of both shear and magnetic order upon optical excitation diverge at the magnetic ordering temperature with the same critical exponent. The time-dependent Ginzburg-Landau theory shows that this concurrent critical slowing down arises from a linear coupling of the interlayer shear to the magnetic order, which is dictated by the broken mirror symmetry intrinsic to the monoclinic stacking. Our results highlight the importance of interlayer shear in ultrafast control of magnetic order via spin-mechanical coupling.

Above-bandgap femtosecond optical excitation of a ferroelectric/dielectric BaTiO3/CaTiO3 superlattice leads to structural responses that are a consequence of the screening of the strong electrostatic coupling between the component layers. Time-resolved x-ray free-electron laser diffraction shows that the structural response to optical excitation includes a net lattice expansion of the superlattice consistent with depolarization-field screening driven by the photoexcited charge carriers. The depolarization-field-screening-driven expansion is separate from a photoacoustic pulse launched from the bottom electrode on which the superlattice was epitaxially grown. The distribution of diffracted intensity of superlattice x-ray reflections indicates that the depolarization-field-screening-induced strain includes a photoinduced expansion in the ferroelectric BaTiO3 and a contraction in CaTiO3. The magnitude of expansion in BaTiO3 layers is larger than the contraction in CaTiO3. The difference in the magnitude of depolarization-field-screening-driven strain in the BaTiO3 and CaTiO3 components can arise from the contribution of the oxygen octahedral rotation patterns at the BaTiO3/CaTiO3 interfaces to the polarization of CaTiO3. The depolarization-field-screening-driven polarization reduction in the CaTiO3 layers points to a new direction for the manipulation of polarization in the component layers of a strongly coupled ferroelectric/dielectric superlattice.

Domain walls are ubiquitous in materials that undergo phase transitions driven by spontaneous symmetry breaking. Domain walls in ferroics and multiferroics have received tremendous attention recently due to their emergent properties distinct from their domain counterparts, for example, their high mobility and controllability, as well as their potential applications in nanoelectronics. However, it is extremely challenging to detect, visualize and study the ferro-rotational (FR) domain walls because the FR order, in contrast to ferromagnetism (FM) and ferroelectricity (FE), is invariant under both the spatial-inversion and the time-reversal operations and thus hardly couple with conventional experimental probes. Here, an FR candidate $\mathrm{NiTiO_{3}}$ is investigated by ultrasensitive electric quadrupole (EQ) second harmonic generation rotational anisotropy (SHG RA) to probe the point symmetries of the two degenerate FR domain states, showing their relation by the vertical mirror operations that are broken below the FR critical temperature. We then visualize the real-space FR domains by scanning EQ SHG microscopy, and further resolve the FR domain walls by revealing a suppressed SHG intensity at domain walls. By taking local EQ SHG RA measurements, we show the restoration of the mirror symmetry at FR domain walls and prove their unconventional nonpolar nature. Our findings not only provide a comprehensive insight into FR domain walls, but also demonstrate a unique and powerful tool for future studies on domain walls of unconventional ferroics, both of which pave the way towards future manipulations and applications of FR domain walls.