Dual Higgs modes entangled into a soliton lattice in CuTe

Abstract

Recently discovered Higgs particle is a key element in the standard model of elementary particles and its analogue in materials, massive Higgs mode, has elucidated intriguing collective phenomena in a wide range of materials with spontaneous symmetry breaking such as antiferromagnets, cold atoms, superconductors, superfluids, and charge density waves (CDW). As a straightforward extension beyond the standard model, multiple Higgs particles have been considered theoretically but not yet for Higgs modes. Here, we report the real-space observations, which suggest two Higgs modes coupled together with a soliton lattice in a solid. Our scanning tunneling microscopy reveals the 1D CDW state of an anisotropic transition metal monochalcogenide crystal CuTe is composed of two distinct but degenerate CDW structures by the layer inversion symmetry broken. More importantly, the amplitudes of each CDW structure oscillate in an out-of-phase fashion to result in a regular array of alternating domains with repeating phase-shift domain walls. This unusual finding is explained by the extra degeneracy in CDWs within the standard Landau theory of the free energy. The multiple and entangled Higgs modes demonstrate how novel collective modes can emerge in systems with distinct symmetries broken simultaneously. The Higgs mode in condensed matter physics refers to the oscillations of the amplitude of the order parameter, and single Higgs modes have been studies in various systems. Here the authors report real-space observation of two coupled Higgs modes in a 1D charge density wave phase of CuTe.