Possible Phason-Polaron Effect on Purely One-Dimensional Charge Order of <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"><mml:mrow><mml:msub><mml:mrow><mml:mi>Mo</mml:mi></mml:mrow><mml:mrow><mml:mn>6</mml:mn></mml:mrow></mml:msub></mml:mrow><mml:mrow><mml:msub><mml:mrow><mml:mi>Se</mml:mi></mml:mrow><mml:mrow><mml:mn>6</mml:mn></mml:mrow></mml:msub></mml:mrow></mml:math> Nanowires
Xing Yang, Jing-Jing Xian, Gang Li, Naoto Nagaosa, Wen-Hao Zhang, Le Qin, Zhi-Mo Zhang, Jing-Tao Lü, Ying-Shuang Fu
Abstract
In one-dimensional (1D) metallic systems, the diverging electron susceptibility and electron-phonon coupling collaboratively drive the electrons into a charge density wave (CDW) state. However, a strictly 1D system is unstable against perturbations, whose effect on CDW order requires clarification ideally with altered coupling to surroundings. Here, we fabricate such a system with nanowires of Mo 6 Se 6 bundles, which are either attached to edges of monolayer MoSe 2 or isolated freely, by postannealing the preformed MoSe 2 . Using scanning tunneling microscopy, we visualize charge modulations and CDW gaps with prominent coherent peaks in the edge-attached nanowires. Astonishingly, the CDW order becomes suppressed in the isolated nanowires, showing CDW correlation gaps without coherent peaks. The contrasting behavior, as revealed with theoretical modeling, is interpreted as the effect of phason polarons on the 1D CDW state. Our work elucidates a possibly unprecedented many-body effect that may be generic to strictly 1D system but undermined in a quasi-1D system.