Yi Lin1,Luca Moreschini1,Junze Zhou1,Sushant Behera1,Sean Mills2,Steven Zeltmann2,Cheng Hu1,Maximilian Huber1,Alexander Weber-Bargioni1,Andrew Minor2,Sinead Griffin1,Aaron Bostwick1,Chris Jozwiak1,Alessandra Lanzara1
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory1,University of California, Berkeley2
Yi Lin1,Luca Moreschini1,Junze Zhou1,Sushant Behera1,Sean Mills2,Steven Zeltmann2,Cheng Hu1,Maximilian Huber1,Alexander Weber-Bargioni1,Andrew Minor2,Sinead Griffin1,Aaron Bostwick1,Chris Jozwiak1,Alessandra Lanzara1
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory1,University of California, Berkeley2
Topological defects have been extensively studied in ferromagnets, liquid crystals and ferroelectric materials. Analogically, it is interesting to understand if charge orders can also form topological structures and how they can be visualized. In this work, we use nano-ARPES to map spatially resolved electronic structure in layered chalcogenides. We find rotational electronic domains that are degenerate in energy. Further characterized by atomic force microscope and electron diffractions, we find these domains are likely on the surface and form defects where chirality can be defined. The observations of the energy degeneracy and the chirality highly resemble the Kibble–Zurek conditions for identifying topological defects.