Topological defects, such as dislocations, vortices, and textures, have been sought after in diverse fields spanning materials science to cosmology. In condensed matter systems, three major classes of materials have been studied for topological defects. These include spin systems such as ferromagnets (spin textures), liquid crystals (dislocations), and dipolar systems such as ferroelectric heterostructures (dislocations, and dipolar textures). Topological defects offer a flexible approach to modify material and device properties, locally and/or globally, and can therefore greatly expand potential functionality and application profile. In addition to that, charged defects can provide the ability to modify and control those additional properties via external fields.

While topological spin structures, such as skyrmions, have been studied extensively over the years, their charge counterparts with breaking of rotational symmetry have started to garner renewed attention. Recent reports on the observation of polar vortices/antivortices in ferroelectric/dielectric oxide heterostructures, and chiral order in halide and chalcogenide materials with reduced dimensionality have created new excitement in this field of study. Motivated by these discoveries, there is a growing interest in tailoring unconventional charged topological defects in a variety of materials that are responsive to electromagnetic radiations, electric and magnetic fields, opening up the prospect of unique coupling between order parameters that was not possible previously, and potentially achieving the levels of control necessary to increase information storage density and decrease power consumption in electronic devices. This emerging field of study therefore provides a novel platform to realize materials, structures and novel devices in electronics and photonics.

In this symposium, we will bring together experts in academia, and national laboratories from around the world, who are pursuing novel approaches to realize, control and understand polarization textures in a broad range of quantum materials such as oxides and chalcogenides. This symposium will cover a range of topics such as charge textures in confined ferroelectric oxides and visible-infrared responsive chalcogenides, novel probes for polarization textures, and development of new foundational theory to explain and guide the realization of polar textures.

defects dielectric properties mesoscale metamaterial nanoscale optical properties quantum materials