2019/11/26 by Rafael M. Fernandes, Jörn W. F. Venderbos · 91 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Cold Atom Physics and Bose-Einstein Condensates #Condensed matter physics #Geometry #Liquid crystal #Mechanics #Moiré pattern #Optics #Physics #Physics of Superconductivity and Magnetism #Quantum #Quantum mechanics #Rotational symmetry #Superlattice #Symmetry breaking #Topological Materials and Phenomena #Twist #cond-mat.mes-hall #cond-mat.str-el #cond-mat.supr-con
paper · pdf · doi:10.1126/sciadv.aba8834
published in Science Advances 6(32), eaba8834 (American Association for the Advancement of Science) · main text plus supplementary material
arxiv created 2019/11/26 · openalex publication_date 2020/08/05 · arxiv updated 2020/08/07 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
symmetry, the system can still undergo a nematic-flop phase transition that spontaneously breaks in-plane twofold rotations. Moreover, elastic fluctuations, manifested as acoustic phonons, mediate a nemato-orbital coupling that ties the nematic director orientation to certain soft directions in momentum space, rendering the Potts-nematic transition mean field and first order. In contrast to the case of rigid crystals, the Fermi surface hot spots associated with these soft directions are maximally coupled to low-energy nematic fluctuations in the moiré superlattice case.