Competing interactions in low-dimensional materials can produce nearly degenerate electronic and structural phases. We investigate the staircase of structural phase transitions in layered IrTe2 for which a number of potential transition mechanisms have been postulated. The spatial coexistence of multiple phases on the micron scale has prevented a detailed analysis of the electronic structure. By exploiting micro-ARPES obtained with synchrotron radiation we extract the electronic structure of the multiple structural phases in IrTe2 in order to address the mechanism underlying the phase transitions. We find direct evidence of lowered energy states that appear in the low-temperature phases, states previously predicted by \textit{ab initio} calculations and extended here. Our results validate a proposed scenario of bonding and anti-bonding states as the driver of the phase transitions.
@article{arxiv.2407.09317,
title = {Bonding states underpinning structural transitions in IrTe$_2$ observed with micro-ARPES},
author = {C. W. Nicholson and M. D. Watson and A. Pulkkinen and M. Rumo and G. Kremer and K. Y. Ma and F. O. von Rohr and C. Cacho and C. Monney},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2407.09317},
year = {2024}
}