The PSI Center for Neutron and Muon Sciences uses neutrons and muons to explore and understand matter and materials.
Lab News & Scientific Highlights
Pressure tuning of competing interactions on a honeycomb lattice
Exchange interactions are mediated via orbital overlaps across chemical bonds. Thus, modifying the bond angles by physical pressure or strain can tune the relative strength of competing interactions. Here we present a remarkable case of such tuning between the Heisenberg (J) and Kitaev (K) exchange, which respectively establish magnetically ordered and spin liquid phases on a honeycomb lattice. We observe ...
Prof. Dr. Marc Janoschek appointed new Head of the PSI Center for Neutron and Muon Sciences (CNM)
Prof. Dr. Marc Janoschek will take over as Head of the PSI Center for Neutron and Muon Sciences (CNM) on 1 June 2025.
Spin density wave and van Hove singularity in the kagome metal CeTi3Bi4
Kagome metals with van Hove singularities near the Fermi level can host intriguing quantum phenomena such as chiral loop currents, electronic nematicity, and unconventional superconductivity. However, to our best knowledge, unconventional magnetic states driven by van Hove singularities–like spin-density waves–have not been observed experimentally in kagome metals. Here, we report ...
Superconductivity and a van Hove singularity con ned to the surface of a topological semimetal
The interplay between topology and superconductivity generated great interest in condensed matter physics. Here, we unveil an unconventional two-dimensional superconducting state in the Dirac nodal line semimetal ZrAs2 which is exclusively con ned to the top and bottom surfaces within the crystal’s ab plane.
As a remarkable consequence ...
Momentum-resolved fingerprint of Mottness in layer-dimerized Nb3Br8
Crystalline solids can become band insulators due to fully lled bands, or Mott insulators due to strong electronic correlations. While Mott insulators can theoretically occur in systems with an even number of electrons per unit cell, distinguishing them from band insulators experimentally has remained a longstanding challenge.
In this work, we present ...
Emergence of topological Hall effect from a fluctuation-based dynamic origin
The topological nature of the electronic bands or spin structure has direct manifestation in experimentally measured Hall conductivity. The extra topological (or geometrical) component to the Hall effect (THE) usually emerges due to multi-k structures, which inherently possess a finite static scalar spin chirality (SSC). Generating a THE in a single-k structure necessitates the consideration of the dynamical origin of SSC, the real material examples of such cases remain scarce to date.
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Recent CNM publications
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Sakrikar P, Shen B, Poldi EHT, Bahrami F, Hu X, Kenney EM, et al.
Pressure tuning of competing interactions on a honeycomb lattice
Nature Communications. 2025; 16(1): 4712 (7 pp.). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-59897-7
DORA PSI -
Lavén R, Fransson E, Erhart P, Juranyi F, Granroth GE, Karlsson M
Unraveling the nature of vibrational dynamics in CsPbI3 by inelastic neutron scattering and molecular dynamics simulations
Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters. 2025: 4812-4818. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jpclett.5c00778
DORA PSI -
Forslund OK, Sugiyama J, Andreica D, Umegaki I, Nocerino E, Brett C, et al.
Revisiting NaxCoO2: a renewed magnetic phase diagram based on electrochemical reaction synthesis
Physical Review Research. 2025; 7(2): 023138 (9 pp.). https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevResearch.7.023138
DORA PSI -
Hayrapetyan A, Tumasyan A, Adam W, Andrejkovic JW, Bergauer T, Chatterjee S, et al.
Measurement of the Drell–Yan forward-backward asymmetry and of the effective leptonic weak mixing angle in proton-proton collisions at √s=13TeV
Physics Letters, Section B: Nuclear, Elementary Particle and High-Energy Physics. 2025; 866: 139526 (31 pp.). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.physletb.2025.139526
DORA PSI