Flavor Symmetry and Ferroelectric Nematics in Transition Metal Dichalcogenides

TL;DR

This paper explores how flavor symmetry breaking in transition metal dichalcogenides leads to ferroelectric nematic phases and introduces the concept of flavortronics, with potential for electric control of electronic flavors.

Contribution

It predicts flavor nematic and charge-density-wave phases in TMDs and introduces the novel idea of flavortronics based on flavor-dependent electric dipoles.

Findings

Identification of flavor symmetry breaking in TMDs

Prediction of ferroelectric nematic phases

Electrically manipulable flavor degrees of freedom

Abstract

Recent magneto-transport experiments have provided compelling evidence for the presence of an energetically isolated threefold Q-valley degeneracy in few-layer transition metal dichalcogenides. We study the flavor SU(3) symmetry breaking when each Landau level triplet is one-third filled or empty and predict that a pure flavor nematic phase and a flavorless charge-density-wave phase will occur respectively below and above a critical magnetic field. Surprisingly, electrons carry flavor-dependent electric dipole moments even at zero magnetic field, rendering the nematics ferroelectric, allowing electric-field manipulation of the flavors, and leading to the concept of flavortronics.