Ziliang Ye

Assistant Professor

Department of Physics & Astronomy

Research Focus

We are an optical spectroscopy group studying light matter interaction in low-dimensional materials. We are currently focused on exploring how topology, correlation effects, and other emergent degrees of freedom interact with each other in two-dimensional van der Waals materials such as graphene, phosphorene, transition metal dichalcogenide, hexagonal boron nitride, high-Tc cuprates and their heterostructures. Our expertise includes ultrafast optical spectroscopy with diffraction-limited resolution at low temperatures and strong magnetic fields as well as nearfield optical microscopy. In the past, we have utilized ultrafast nonlinear optical spectroscopies to reveal the crystal and electronic structure of TMDCs. We are currently interested in developing novel optical microscopy techniques to interrogate the 2D material’s intrinsic response and to control them with the strong optical field provided by coherent laser light. In the meantime, novel devices based on bulk photovoltaic effect and topological superconductivity are being actively explored in the group for classical and quantum applications.

Current Projects

Shift current and bulk photovoltaic effect at low-symmetry interfaces
Topological superconductivity in van der Waals heterostructures
Bose-Einstein condensate of interlayer excitons
Sliding ferroelectricy in twisted 2D semiconductors
Multidimensional coherent spectroscopy of correlated materials

Selected Publications

D. Yang, J. Wu, B. T. Zhou, J. Liang, T. Ideue, T. Siu, K.M. Awan, K. Watanabe, T. Taniguchi, Y. Iwasa, M. Franz, Z. Ye. Spontaneous polarization induced photovoltaic effect in rhombohedrally stacked MoS2. Nat. Photon. 16, 469 (2022).
J. Liang, D. Yang, J. Wu, J.I. Dadap, K. Watanabe, T. Taniguchi, Z. Ye. Optically probing the asymmetric interlayer coupling in rhombohedral-stacked MoS2 bilayer. Phys. Rev. X 12, 041005 (2022).
J. Wu, D. Yang, J. Liang, M. Werner, E. Ostroumov, Y. Xiao, K. Watanabe, T. Taniguchi, J.I. Dadap, D.J. Jones, Z. Ye. Ultrafast response of spontaneous photovoltaic effect in 3R-MoS2-based heterostructures. Sci. Adv. 8, eade375 (2022).

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