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Optically active spin defects in wide band-gap semiconductors serve as a local sensor of multiple degrees of freedom in a variety of "hard" and "soft" condensed matter systems. Taking advantage of the recent progress on quantum sensing using van der Waals (vdW) quantum materials, here we report direct measurements of spin waves excited in magnetic insulator Y3Fe5O12 (YIG) by boron vacancy $V_B^-$ spin defects contained in few-layer thick hexagonal boron nitride nanoflakes. We show that the ferromagnetic resonance and parametric spin excitations can be effectively detected by $V_B^-$ spin defects under various experimental conditions through optically detected magnetic resonance measurements. The off-resonant dipole interaction between YIG magnons and $V_B^-$ spin defects is mediated by multi-magnon scattering processes, which may find relevant applications in a range of emerging quantum sensing, computing, and metrology technologies. Our results also highlight the opportunities offered by quantum spin defects in layered two-dimensional vdW materials for investigating local spin dynamic behaviors in magnetic solid-state matters.

Co-based materials have recently been explored due to potential to realise complex bond-dependent anisotropic magnetism. Prominent examples include Na$_2$Co$_2$TeO$_6$, BaCo$_2$(AsO$_4$)$_2$, Na$_2$BaCo(PO$_4$)$_2$, and CoX$_2$ (X = Cl, Br, I). In order to provide insight into the magnetic interactions in these compounds, we make a comparative analysis of their local crystal electric field excitations spectra via Raman scattering measurements. Combining these measurements with theoretical analysis confirms the validity of $j_{\rm eff} = 1/2$ single-ion ground states for all compounds, and provides accurate experimental estimates of the local crystal distortions, which play a prominent role in the magnetic couplings between spin-orbital coupled Co moments., Comment: 11 pages, 7 figures

Band gap is known as an effective parameter for tuning the Lande $g$-factor in semiconductors and can be manipulated in a wide range through the bowing effect in ternary alloys. In this work, using the recently developed virtual substrate technique, high-quality InAsSb alloys throughout the whole Sb composition range are fabricated and a large $g$-factor of $g\approx -90$ at the minimum band gap of $\sim 0.1$ eV, which is almost twice that in bulk InSb is found. Further analysis to the zero gap limit reveals a possible gigantic $g$-factor of $g\approx -200$ with a peculiar relativistic Zeeman effect that disperses as the square root of magnetic field. Such a $g$-factor enhancement toward the narrow gap limit cannot be quantitatively described by the conventional Roth formula, as the orbital interaction effect between the nearly triply degenerated bands becomes the dominant source for the Zeeman splitting. These results may provide new insights into realizing large $g$-factors and spin polarized states in semiconductors and topological materials.

Using optical magneto-spectroscopy, we investigate the magnetic excitations of Na$_2$Co$_2$TeO$_6$ in a broad magnetic field range ($0\ \rm{T}\leq B\leq 17.5\ \rm{T}$) at low temperature. Our measurements reveal rich spectra of in-plane magnetic excitations with a surprisingly large number of modes, even in the high-field spin-polarized state. Theoretical calculations find that the Na-occupation disorder in \NCTO plays a crucial role in generating these modes. Our work demonstrates the necessity to consider disorder in the spin environment in the search for Kitaev quantum spin liquid states in practicable materials.

Lanthanides in the trivalent oxidation state are typically described using an ionic picture that leads to localized magnetic moments. The hierarchical energy scales associated with trivalent lanthanides produce desirable properties for e.g., molecular magnetism, quantum materials, and quantum transduction. Here, we show that this traditional ionic paradigm breaks down for praseodymium in the 4+ oxidation state. Synthetic, spectroscopic, and theoretical tools deployed on several solid-state Pr4+ oxides uncover the unusual participation of 4f orbitals in bonding and the anomalous hybridization of the 4f1 configuration with ligand valence electrons, analogous to transition metals. The resulting competition between crystal-field and spin-orbit-coupling interactions fundamentally transforms the spin-orbital magnetism of Pr4+, which departs from the Jeff =1/2 limit and resembles that of high-valent actinides. Our results show that Pr4+ ions are in a class on their own, where the hierarchy of single-ion energy scales can be tailored to explore new correlated phenomena in quantum materials., Comment: 9 pages, 4 figures, and SI (47 pages)

We report the temperature evolution of the Dirac band in semiconducting zirconium pentatelluride (ZrTe$_5$) using magneto-infrared spectroscopy. We find that the band gap is temperature independent at low temperatures and increases with temperature at elevated temperatures. Although such an observation seems to support a weak topological insulator phase at all temperatures and defy the previously reported topological phase transition (TPT) at an intermediate temperature in ZrTe$_5$, we show that it is also possible to explain the observation by considering the effect of conduction-valence band mixing and band inversion with a strong topological insulator phase at low temperatures. Our work provides an alternative picture of the band gap evolution across TPT.

Neutrons are encountered in many different fields, including condensed matter physics, space exploration, nuclear power, and healthcare. Neutrons interacting with a biological target produce secondary charged particles that are damaging to human health. The most effective way to shield neutrons is to slow them to thermal energies and then capture the thermalized neutrons. These factors lead us to consider potential materials solutions for neutron shields that maximize the protection of humans while minimizing the shield mass, and which adapt well to modern additive manufacturing techniques. Using hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) as a capture medium and high-density polyethylene (HDPE) as a thermalization medium, we aim to design the optimal internal structure of h$^{10}$BN/HDPE composites by minimizing the effective dose, which is a measure of the estimated radiation damage exposure for a human. Through Monte Carlo simulations in Geant4, we find that the optimal structure reduces the effective dose up to a factor of 72x over aluminum (Al) and 4x over HDPE; this is a significant improvement in shielding effectiveness that could dramatically reduce the radiation exposure of occupational workers.

3D room layout estimation by a single panorama using deep neural networks has made great progress. However, previous approaches can not obtain efficient geometry awareness of room layout with the only latitude of boundaries or horizon-depth. We present that using horizon-depth along with room height can obtain omnidirectional-geometry awareness of room layout in both horizontal and vertical directions. In addition, we propose a planar-geometry aware loss function with normals and gradients of normals to supervise the planeness of walls and turning of corners. We propose an efficient network, LGT-Net, for room layout estimation, which contains a novel Transformer architecture called SWG-Transformer to model geometry relations. SWG-Transformer consists of (Shifted) Window Blocks and Global Blocks to combine the local and global geometry relations. Moreover, we design a novel relative position embedding of Transformer to enhance the spatial identification ability for the panorama. Experiments show that the proposed LGT-Net achieves better performance than current state-of-the-arts (SOTA) on benchmark datasets., Comment: To Appear in CVPR 2022

Terahertz (THz) metamaterials have been developed for THz sensing, detection, imaging, and many other functions due to their unusual absorbers. However, the unusual absorption spectra change with different incident angles. Thus, we designed and fabricated a focal plane array with metal-insulator-metal (MIM) structure metamaterial absorbers for further research. The absorption spectrum with incident angles from 20 to 60 was measured using THz time-domain spectroscopy (THz-TDS), and the experimental results reveal that the absorption spectrum changes with incident angle variations. A basic analytical asymmetric peak model for extracting absorption-frequency characteristics was developed in this study to quantitatively explore this variation in the absorber behavior with incident angles. The best result was that the frequency corresponding to the highest absorption can be easily found using this peak model. The experimental data was coherent with the validation of the asymmetric peak model. Moreover, a second model to quantitatively relate parameters to the incident angle was discovered, allowing for the prediction of absorption spectrum shifts and changes. The absorption spectrum was predicted to have a valley-like absorption curve at particular incident angles based on the secondary models deduction. The proposed extraction method's essential feature is that it can be applied to any physics-based MIM metamaterial system. Such a model will guide the design and optimization of THz metamaterial absorbers, sensors, imagers, and many others.

Realizing a large Land\'{e} $g$-factor of electrons in solid-state materials has long been thought of as a rewarding task as it can trigger abundant immediate applications in spintronics and quantum computing. Here, by using metamorphic InAsSb/InSb superlattices (SLs), we demonstrate an unprecedented high value of $g\approx 104$, twice larger than that in bulk InSb, and fully spin-polarized states at low magnetic fields. In addition, we show that the $g$-factor can be tuned on demand from 20 to 110 via varying the SL period. The key ingredients of such a wide tunability are the wavefunction mixing and overlap between the electron and hole states, which have drawn little attention in prior studies. Our work not only establishes metamorphic InAsSb/InSb as a promising and competitive material platform for future quantum devices but also provides a new route toward $g$-factor engineering in semiconductor structures.

The identification of a non-trivial band topology usually relies on directly probing the protected surface/edge states. But, it is difficult to achieve electronically in narrow-gap topological materials due to the small (meV) energy scales. Here, we demonstrate that band inversion, a crucial ingredient of the non-trivial band topology, can serve as an alternative, experimentally accessible indicator. We show that an inverted band can lead to a four-fold splitting of the non-zero Landau levels, contrasting the two-fold splitting (spin splitting only) in the normal band. We confirm our predictions in magneto-transport experiments on a narrow-gap strong topological insulator, zirconium pentatelluride (ZrTe$_5$), with the observation of additional splittings in the quantum oscillations and also an anomalous peak in the extreme quantum limit. Our work establishes an effective strategy for identifying the band inversion as well as the associated topological phases for future topological materials research.