Search

Misfit layer compounds, heterostructures composed by a regular alternating stacking of rocksalt monochalcogenides bilayers and few-layer transition metal dichalchogenides, are an emergent platform to investigate highly doped transition metal dichalcogenides. Among them, (LaSe)$_{1.14}$(NbSe$_2$)$_2$ displays Ising superconductivity, while the presence of a charge density wave (CDW) in the material is still under debate. Here, by using polarized Raman spectroscopy and first-principles calculations, we show that NbSe$_2$ undergoes a doping-driven collapse of the CDW ordering within the misfit, and no signature of the CDW is detected down to 8~K. We provide a complete experimental and theoretical description of the lattice dynamics of this misfit compound. We show that the vibrational properties are obtained from those of the two subunits, namely the LaSe unit and the NbSe$_2$ bilayer, in the presence of a suitable field-effect doping, and then highlight the 2D nature of the lattice dynamics of NbSe$_2$ within the (LaSe)$_{1.14}$(NbSe$_2$)$_2$ 3D structure., Comment: First version of the manuscript (before revisions)

Topological defects are ubiquitous, they manifest in a wide variety of systems such as liquid crystals, magnets or superconductors. The recent quest for nonabelian anyons in condensed matter physics stimulates the interest for topological defects since they can be hosted in vortices in quantum magnets or topological superconductors. In addition to these vortex defects, in this study we propose to investigate edge dislocations in 2D magnets as new building blocks for topological physics since they can be described as vortices in the structural phase field. Here we demonstrate the existence of higher order topological dislocations within the higher order moir\'e pattern of the van der Waals 2D magnet CrCl3 deposited on Au(111). Surprizingly, these higher order dislocations arise from ordinary simple edge dislocations in the atomic lattice of CrCl3. We provide a theoretical framework explaining the higher order dislocations as vortex with a winding Chern number of 2. We expect that these original defects could stabilize some anyons either in a 2D quantum magnet or within a 2D superconductor coupled to it.

The interplay of superconductivity and disorder generates a wealth of complex phenomena. In particular, the peculiar structure of diffusive electronic wavefunctions is predicted to increase the superconducting critical temperature in some range of disorder. In this work, we use an epitaxial monolayer of lead showing a simple band structure and homogenous structural disorder as a model system of a 2D superconductor in the weak-antilocalization regime. Then, we perform an extensive study of the emergent fluctuations of local density of states (LDOS) and spectral energy gap in this material and compare them with both analytical results and numerical solution of the attractive Hubbard model. We show that mesoscopic LDOS fluctuations allow to probe locally both the elastic and inelastic scattering rates which are notoriously difficult to measure in transport measurements., Comment: Accepted for publication in PRB - 13 pages, 6 figures