A collaboration between theoretical physicists Dr. Chengkang Zhou and Professor Zi Yang Meng from the Department of Physics at The University of Hong Kong (HKU), along with experimentalists Dr. Zeliang Sun, Professors Kai Sun and Liuyan Zhao from the Department of Physics at the University of Michigan, and Professor Rui He from the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Texas Tech University, has led to a significant discovery in quantum physics. Their study was published in a recent issue of Nature Physics (Nat. Phys. (2024)). The research team was the first to experimentally observe a transition from a 3-dimensional (3D) long-range order state to a 2-dimensional (2D) flat pattern vestigial order state in NiPS3. The vestigial order can be seen as the retention during the process of symmetry breaking. This occurs when the primary magnetic long-range order state breaks down into a simpler form - in this case, a 2D vestigial order state (known as Z3 Potts-nematicity) - as the NiPS3 material is thinned. The collaboration between the large-scale Monte Carlo simulation and the experiments led to this discovery during the dimension crossover process. Continue reading.
 |
|---|