Jiachen Yu
← Research

Imaging interacting electrons in quantum devices

A device architecture that combines local electrostatic control with STM imaging, used to see interaction-driven structure in quantum Hall edges and in tunable quantum dots.

Placeholder figure — replace with data from this project.
Placeholder figure — replace with data from this project.

Draft text — edit freely.

Electrons in a strong magnetic field organize themselves into quantum Hall states whose edges carry the current. How those edges look in real space — how far they extend, how interactions restructure them, where compressible and incompressible strips sit — has long been inferred indirectly from transport.

We built a device architecture that lets a scanning tunnelling microscope image such a system while it is being controlled electrostatically. With it we obtained high-resolution images of interaction-driven restructuring of quantum Hall edge states, and of electronic states inside gate-tunable quantum dots.

Approach

  • Devices designed so that local gating and atomic-resolution imaging can happen at once
  • Scanning tunnelling microscopy and spectroscopy at millikelvin temperatures and high magnetic fields
  • Comparison with theory of edge reconstruction and of interacting states in confined geometries
  • Visualizing interaction-driven restructuring of quantum Hall edge states, Nature (2025)
  • Visualizing interacting electronic states in a quantum dot, under review (2026)