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Photoluminescence (PL) from excitons serves as a powerful tool to characterize the optoelectronic property and band structure of semiconductors, especially for atomically thin 2D transition metal chalcogenide (TMD) materials. However, PL quenches quickly when the thickness of TMD material increases from monolayer to few-layers, due to the change from direct to indirect band transition. Here we show that PL can be recovered by engineering multilayer heterostructures, with the band transition reserved to be direct type. We report emission from layer engineered interlayer excitons from these multilayer heterostructures. Moreover, as desired for valleytronic devices, the lifetime, valley polarization, and the valley lifetime of the generated interlayer excitons can all be significantly improved as compared with that in the monolayer-monolayer heterostructure. Our results pave the way for controlling the properties of interlayer excitons by layer engineering., Comment: 5 Figures in main text

In this paper we propose a general framework to study the quantum geometry of $\sigma$-models when they are effectively localized to small quantum fluctuations around constant maps. Such effective theories have surprising exact descriptions at all loops in terms of target geometry and can be rigorously formulated. We illustrate how to turn the physics idea of exact semi-classical approximation into a geometric set-up in this framework, using Gauss-Manin connection. As an application, we carry out this program in details by the example of topological quantum mechanics, and explain how to implement the idea of exact semi-classical approximation into a proof of the algebraic index theorem. The proof resembles much of the physics derivation of Atiyah-Singer index theorem and clarifies the geometric face of many other mathematical constructions., Comment: 43 pages. Comments are welcome

Dirac point in two-dimensional (2D) materials has been a fascinating subject of research. Recently, it has been theoretically predicted that Dirac point may also be stabilized in 2D magnetic systems. However, it remains a challenge to identify concrete 2D materials which host such magnetic Dirac point. Here, based on first-principles calculations and theoretical analysis, we propose a stable 2D material, the monolayers TaCoTe$_2$, as an antiferromagnetic (AFM) 2D Dirac material. We show that it has an AFM ground state with an out-of-plane N\'{e}el vector. It hosts a pair of 2D AFM Dirac points on the Fermi level in the absence of spin-orbit coupling (SOC). When the SOC is considered, a small gap is opened at the original Dirac points. Meanwhile, another pair of Dirac points appear on the Brillouin zone boundary below the Fermi level, which are robust under SOC and have a type-II dispersion. Such a type-II AFM Dirac point has not been observed before. We further show that the location of this Dirac point as well as its dispersion type can be controlled by tuning the N\'{e}el vector orientation., Comment: 8 pages, 8 figures

Since its discovery, Berry phase has been demonstrated to play an important role in many quantum systems. In gapped Bernal bilayer graphene, the Berry phase can be continuously tuned from zero to 2pi, which offers a unique opportunity to explore the tunable Berry phase on the physical phenomena. Here, we report experimental observation of Berry phases-induced valley splitting and crossing in moveable bilayer graphene p-n junction resonators. In our experiment, the bilayer graphene resonators are generated by combining the electric field of scanning tunneling microscope tip with the gap of bilayer graphene. A perpendicular magnetic field changes the Berry phase of the confined bound states in the resonators from zero to 2pi continuously and leads to the Berry phase difference for the two inequivalent valleys in the bilayer graphene. As a consequence, we observe giant valley splitting and unusual valley crossing of the lowest bound states. Our results indicate that the bilayer graphene resonators can be used to manipulate the valley degree of freedom in valleytronics.

We explain how dispersionless integrable hierarchy in 2d topological field theory arises from the Kodaira-Spencer gravity (BCOV theory). The infinitely many commuting Hamiltonians are given by the current observables associated to the infinite abelian symmetries of the Kodaira-Spencer gravity. We describe a BV framework of effective field theories that leads to the B-model interpretation of dispersionless integrable hierarchy., Comment: 28 pages. Comments are welcome

Exotic properties in single or few layers of van der Waals materials carry great promise for applications in nanoscaled electronics, optoelectronics and flexible devices. The established, distinct examples include extremely high mobility and superior thermal conductivity in graphene, a large direct band gap in monolayer MoS2 and quantum spin Hall effect in WTe2 monolayer, etc. All these exotic properties arise from the electron quantum confinement effect in the two-dimensional limit. Here we report a novel phenomenon due to one-dimensional (1D) confinement of carriers in a layered van der Waals material NbSi0.45Te2 revealed by angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy, i.e. directional massless Dirac fermions. The 1D behavior of the carriers is directly related to a stripe-like structural modulation with the long-range translational symmetry only along the stripe direction, as perceived by scanning tunneling microscopy experiment. The four-fold degenerated node of 1D Dirac dispersion is essential and independent on band inversion, because of the protection by nonsymmorphic symmetry of the stripe structure. Our study not only provides a playground for investigating the striking properties of the essential directional massless Dirac fermions, but also introduces a unique monomer with 1D long-range order for engineering nano-electronic devices based on heterostructures of layered van der Waals materials., Comment: A revised version published in Nature Materials (2019); 20 pages, 4 figures

In this work, we propose a new nonparametric approach for reconstructing a function from observational data using an Artificial Neural Network (ANN), which has no assumptions about the data and is a completely data-driven approach. We test the ANN method by reconstructing functions of the Hubble parameter measurements $H(z)$ and the distance-redshift relation $D_L(z)$ of Type Ia supernovae. We find that both $H(z)$ and $D_L(z)$ can be reconstructed with high accuracy. Furthermore, we estimate cosmological parameters using the reconstructed functions of $H(z)$ and $D_L(z)$ and find the results are consistent with those obtained using the observational data directly. Therefore, we propose that the function reconstructed by ANN can represent the actual distribution of observational data and can be used for parameter estimation in further cosmological research. In addition, we present a new strategy for training and evaluating the neural network, and a code for reconstructing functions using ANN has been developed and is available for download., Comment: 15 pages, 16 figures, and 1 table, fixed errors in Table 1. The code repository is available at https://github.com/Guo-Jian-Wang/refann

Cosmological CPT violation will rotate the polarized direction of CMB photons, convert partial CMB E mode into B mode and vice versa. It will generate non-zero EB, TB spectra and change the EE, BB, TE spectra. This phenomenon gives us a way to detect the CPT-violation signature from CMB observations, and also provides a new mechanism to produce B mode polarization. In this paper, we perform a global analysis on tensor-to-scalar ratio $r$ and polarization rotation angles based on current CMB datasets with both low $\ell$ (Planck, BICEP2/Keck Array) and high $\ell$ (POLARBEAR, SPTpol, ACTPol). Benefited from the high precision of CMB data, we obtain the isotropic rotation angle $\bar{\alpha} = -0.01^\circ \pm 0.37^\circ $ at 68% C.L., the variance of the anisotropic rotation angles $C^{\alpha}(0)<0.0032\,\mathrm{rad}^2$, the scale invariant power spectrum $D^{\alpha\alpha}_{\ell \in [2, 350]}<4.71\times 10^{-5} \,\mathrm{rad}^2$ and $r<0.057$ at 95% C.L.. Our result shows that with the polarization rotation effect, the 95% upper limit on $r$ gets tightened by 17%., Comment: 8 pages, 2 figures