English

Discovery of a symmetry-driven electronic cascade in a $d$-wave altermagnet

Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics 2026-07-13 v1

Abstract

Altermagnets host magnetic compensation together with non-relativistic spin-split bands, a coexistence enabled by crystal symmetry. Yet whether and how crystal symmetry organizes collective electronic order remains largely unexplored. Here we uncover a symmetry-driven cascade of finite-qq charge order in a dd-wave altermagnet Rb1δ_{1-{\delta}}V2_2Te2_2O, using phase-resolved scanning tunneling microscopy. A primary density-wave instability drives an initial electronic reconstruction, followed by the emergence of a nematic component and an off-axis modulation with wave vectors geometrically tied to the preceding orders. Phase-resolved spectroscopy distinguishes these components through separate contrast-inversion energies and maps out branch-selective spectral-weight redistribution within the off-axis mode. Together with doping and temperature evolution, these observations establish a highly coordinated hierarchy of coupled density-wave instabilities, consistent with successive symmetry lowering. This multi-component hierarchy can be well described in the Landau framework through sequential softening of the charge orders, where bilinear coupling to their compatible octupolar partners at the lower-symmetry stages enables mutual stabilization within an intertwined charge-multipole state. Such a transparent realization of a charge-order cascade shows how altermagnetic symmetry can extend beyond band formation to organize collective electronic order, offering a new perspective on emergent many-body states in correlated quantum materials.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2607.11567,
  title  = {Discovery of a symmetry-driven electronic cascade in a $d$-wave altermagnet},
  author = {Zhouyi Yin and Zheng Shi and Shuxuan Zhang and Changchao Liu and Xingkai Cheng and Fayuan Zhang and Han-Bin Deng and Jia-Xin Yin and Chaoyu Chen and Guang-Han Cao and Junwei Liu and Yue Zhao},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2607.11567},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

26 pages, 11 figures. Comments are welcome