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Topological defects are ubiquitous, they manifest in a wide variety of systems such as liquid crystals, magnets or superconductors. The recent quest for non‐abelian 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, this study proposes 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. It demonstrates the existence of higher order topological dislocations within the higher order moiré pattern of the van der Waals 2D magnet CrCl3 deposited on Au(111). Surprisingly, these higher order dislocations arise from ordinary simple edge dislocations in the atomic lattice of CrCl3. This study provide a theoretical framework explaining the higher order dislocations as vortices with a winding Chern number of 2. It is expected that these original defects can stabilize some anyons either in a 2D quantum magnet or within a 2D superconductor coupled to it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) display a rich variety of instabilities such as spin and charge orders, Ising superconductivity, and topological properties. Their physical properties can be controlled by doping in electric double‐layer field‐effect transistors (FET). However, for the case of single layer NbSe2, FET doping is limited to ≈1 × 1014 cm−2, while a somewhat larger charge injection can be obtained via deposition of K atoms. Here, by performing angle‐resolved photoemission spectroscopy, scanning tunneling microscopy, quasiparticle interference measurements, and first‐principles calculations it is shown that a misfit compound formed by sandwiching NbSe2 and LaSe layers behaves as a NbSe2 single layer with a rigid doping of 0.55–0.6 electrons per Nb atom or ≈6 × 1014 cm−2. Due to this huge doping, the 3 × 3 charge density wave is replaced by a 2 × 2 order with very short coherence length. As a tremendous number of different misfit compounds can be obtained by sandwiching TMDs layers with rock salt or other layers, this work paves the way to the exploration of heavily doped 2D TMDs over an unprecedented wide range of doping. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is presently a tremendous activity around the field of topological superconductivity and Majorana fermions. Among the many questions raised, it has become increasingly important to establish the topological or non-topological origin of features associated with Majorana fermions such as zero-bias peaks. Here, we compare in-gap features associated either with isolated magnetic impurities or with magnetic clusters strongly coupled to the atomically thin superconductor Pb/Si(111). We study this system by means of scanning tunneling microscopy and spectroscopy (STM/STS). We take advantage of the fact that the Pb/Si(111) monolayer can exist either in a crystal-ordered phase or in an incommensurate disordered phase to compare the observed spectroscopic features in both phases. This allows us to demonstrate that the strongly resolved in-gap states we found around the magnetic clusters in the disordered phase of Pb have a clear topological origin. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We have performed scanning tunneling microscopy experiments in the quasi-one dimensional charge density wave (CDW) system NbSe 3 , where we could image and study in detail individual solitons corresponding to the self-trapping of a single electron. Our analysis shows that the type of soliton we observed is an “Amplitude Soliton”, characterized by a vanishing CDW amplitude at the soliton center and by a π -shift of its phase along the chain direction. Pairs of solitons or multiple solitons were also observed. Such observations could be made only in the high-temperature CDW phase. Additionally, one-dimensional Friedel oscillations around charged defects could also be imaged and are found to be superimposed to the CDW. The distinction between amplitude solitons and Friedel oscillations can be made without any ambiguity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Electrical contacts between nanoengineered systems are expected to constitute the basic building blocks of future nanoscale electronics. However, the accurate characterization and understanding of electrical contacts at the nanoscale is an experimentally challenging task. Here, we employ low-temperature scanning tunneling spectroscopy to investigate the conductance of individual nanocontacts formed between flat Pb islands and their supporting substrates. We observe a suppression of the differential tunnel conductance at small bias voltages due to dynamical Coulomb blockade effects. The differential conductance spectra allow us to determine the capacitances and resistances of the electrical contacts which depend systematically on the island-substrate contact area. Calculations based on the theory of environmentally assisted tunneling agree well with the measurements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We report on scanning-tunneling microscopy experiments in a charge-density wave (CDW) system allowing visually capturing and studying in detail the individual solitons corresponding to the selftrapping of just one electron. This "Amplitude Soliton" is marked by vanishing of the CDW amplitude and by the π shift of its phase. It might be the realization of the spinon—the long-sought particle (along with the holon) in the study of science of strongly correlated electronic systems. As a distinct feature we also observe one-dimensional Friedel oscillations superimposed on the CDW which develop independently of solitons. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: We have studied by scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) the two charge-density wave (CDW) transitions in NbSe3 on in situ cleaved plane. We could identify the three types of chains existing inside a single unit cell as well as characterize how both CDWs are distributed on these elementary chains. We also followed between 5 and 140K the temperature dependence of first-order CDW satellite spots, obtained from the Fourier transform of the STM images, to extract the surface critical temperatures . Whereas the high-temperature CDW appears to have comparable critical temperature to the bulk one, the low-T CDW transition occurs at , more than 15K above the bulk while at exactly the same wave number. A reasonable mechanism for such an unusually high surface enhancement is a softening of transverse phonon modes involved in the CDW formation. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

We study the unconventional superconducting correlations caused by a single isolated magnetic impurity in a conventional s-wave superconductor. Because of the local breaking of time-reversal symmetry, the impurity induces unconventional superconductivity, which is even in both space and spin variables but odd under time inversion. We derive an exact proportionality relation between the even-frequency component of the local electron density of states and the imaginary part of the odd-frequency local pairing function. By applying this relation to scanning tunneling microscopy spectra taken on top of magnetic impurities immersed in a Pb/Si(111) monolayer, we show experimental evidence of the occurrence of the odd-frequency pairing in these systems and explicitly extract its superconducting function from the data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]