Pablo Jarillo-Herrero

The phenomenon of electron tunneling has long been central to quantum transport and continues to provide a powerful framework for understanding and controlling electronic processes in solids. When combined with optical excitation, tunneling becomes a particularly rich platform for experiments, because light can drive nonequilibrium carrier populations and open transport pathways that are inaccessible without optical excitation. The emergence of van der Waals (vdW) materials has greatly expanded this opportunity by enabling atomically thin heterostructures with clean interfaces, engineered barriers, and highly tunable band alignment. In this review, we discuss the fundamental mechanisms of photo-assisted transport and the realization of vdW tunnel junctions and show how they provide electrical access to nonequilibrium dynamics and collective excitations in quantum materials. We further examine emerging functionalities including photodetection, tunneling-driven light emission, sensing, and memory. Finally, we present a forward-looking perspective on new opportunities such as quantum-geometric probes, twist-resolved spectroscopy, moiré ferroelectricity, and scalable architectures for computing and sensing.

Van der Waals (vdW) superconductors remain superconducting down to the monolayer limit, enabling the exploration of emergent physical phenomena and functionality driven by reduced dimensionality. Here, we report the characterization of the kinetic inductance of atomically thin NbSe ₂ , a two-dimensional van der Waals superconductor, using superconducting coplanar waveguides and microwave measurement techniques familiar to circuit quantum electrodynamics (cQED). The kinetic inductance scales inversely with the number of NbSe ₂ layers, reaching 1.2 nH/ □ in the monolayer limit. Furthermore, the measured kinetic inductance exhibits a thickness-dependent crossover from clean- to dirty-limit behavior, with enhanced dirty-limit contributions emerging in the ultra-thin regime. These effects are likely driven by increased surface scattering, multi-band superconductivity, and geometric confinement. Additionally, the self-Kerr nonlinearity of the NbSe ₂ films ranges from K/2π = −0.006 to −14.7 Hz/photon, indicating its strong potential in applications requiring compact, nearly linear, high-inductance superconducting quantum devices and detectors. The fabrication and characterization techniques demonstrated here are extensible to the investigation of other two-dimensional superconductors.

Realizing Chern insulators with Chern numbers >1 remains a major goal in quantum materials research. Such platforms promise multichannel dissipationless chiral transport and access to correlated phases beyond the conventional C = 1 paradigm. We discover high-Chern-number orbital magnets in twisted monolayer-multilayer rhombohedral graphene, denoted (1 + n) with n = 3, 4 and 5. Magnetotransport measurements show pronounced anomalous Hall effects at one and three electrons per moiré unit cell when they are polarized away from the moiré interface. Across these systems, we observe a clear topological hierarchy C = n, revealed by Středa trajectories and quantized Hall resistance, supported by self-consistent mean-field calculations. Moreover, we realize both electrical and magnetic switching of the high-Chern-number states by flipping the valley polarization. These results establish a tunable hierarchy of orbital Chern magnets in twisted rhombohedral graphene, offering systematic control of Chern number and topology through layer engineering in pristine graphene moiré systems.

Strong interactions between particles can lead to emergent collective excitations. Spin waves, known as magnons, have been predicted to reach a strongly interacting hydrodynamic regime, where they form a slow collective density mode. In this work, we isolate exfoliated sheets of chromium trichloride (CrCl ₃ ), where magnon interactions are strong, and develop a technique to measure the collective magnon dynamics though nearby nitrogen-vacancy centers in diamond. Thermal magnetic fluctuations generated by monolayer CrCl ₃ increase upon decreasing temperature; this anomalous trend may be a consequence of the damping rate of a low-energy magnon sound mode that sharpens as magnon interactions increase with increasing temperature. By measuring the magnetic fluctuations emitted by thin multilayer CrCl ₃ in the presence of a variable-frequency drive field, we obtain spectroscopic evidence for this two-dimensional magnon sound mode.

Realizing Chern insulators with Chern numbers greater than one remains a major goal in quantum materials research. Such platforms promise multichannel dissipationless chiral transport and access to correlated phases beyond the conventional C = 1 paradigm. Here, we discover a family of high-Chern-number orbital magnets in twisted monolayer-multilayer rhombohedral graphene, denoted (1+n) with n = 3, 4, and 5. Magnetotransport measurements show pronounced anomalous Hall effects at one and three electrons per moiré unit cell when they are polarized away from the moiré interface. Across the (1+n) systems, we observe a clear topological hierarchy C = n, revealed by the Středa trajectories and the quantized Hall resistance. Our experimental observations are supported by self-consistent mean-field calculations. Moreover, we realize both electrical and magnetic switching of the high-Chern-number states by flipping the valley polarization. Together, these results establish a tunable hierarchy of orbital Chern magnets in twisted rhombohedral graphene, offering systematic control of Chern number and topology through layer engineering in pristine graphene moiré systems.

Understanding the nature of superconductivity in magic-angle graphene remains challenging. A key difficulty lies in discerning the different energy scales in this strongly interacting system, particularly the superconducting gap. In this work, we report simultaneous tunneling spectroscopy and transport measurements of magic-angle twisted trilayer graphene. This approach allows us to identify two coexisting V-shaped tunneling gaps with different energy scales: a distinct low-energy superconducting gap that vanishes at the superconducting critical temperature and magnetic field and a higher-energy pseudogap. The superconducting tunneling spectra display a linear gap-filling behavior with temperature and magnetic field and exhibit the Volovik effect, consistent with a nodal order parameter. Our work suggests an unconventional nature of the superconducting gap and establishes an experimental framework for multidimensional investigation of tunable quantum materials.

Moiré lattices provide a highly tunable platform for exploring the interplay between electronic correlations and band topology. Introducing a second moiré pattern extends this paradigm: interference between the two moiré patterns produces a supermoiré modulation, opening a route to further tailor electronic properties. Twisted trilayer graphene generally exemplifies such a system: two distinct moiré patterns arise from the relative twists between adjacent graphene layers. Here, we report the observation of correlated phenomena across a wide range of twisted trilayer graphene devices whose twist angles lie along two continuous lines in the twist-angle parameter space. Depending on the degree of lattice relaxation, twisted trilayer graphene falls into two classes: moiré polycrystals, composed of periodic domains with locally commensurate moiré order, and moiré quasicrystals, characterized by smoothly varying local moiré configurations. In helically twisted moiré polycrystals, we observe an anomalous Hall effect, consistent with topological bands arising from domains with broken $xy$-inversion symmetry. In contrast, superconductivity appears generically in our moiré quasicrystals. A subset of these systems exhibits signatures of spatially modulated superconductivity, which we attribute to the supermoiré structure. Our findings uncover the organizing principles of the observed correlated phases in twisted trilayer graphene, highlight the critical roles of the supermoiré modulation and lattice relaxation, and suggest a broader framework in which magic conditions arise not as isolated points but as extended manifolds within the multi-dimensional twist-angle space of complex moiré materials.

In multilayer moiré heterostructures, the interference of multiple twist angles ubiquitously leads to tunable ultralong-wavelength patterns known as supermoiré lattices. However, their impact on the system’s many-body electronic phase diagram remains largely unexplored. We present local compressibility measurements revealing numerous incompressible states resulting from supermoiré lattice–scale isospin symmetry breaking driven by strong interactions. By using the supermoiré lattice occupancy as a probe of isospin symmetry, we observed an unexpected doubling of the miniband filling near ν = − 2 , possibly indicating a hidden phase transition or normal-state pairing proximal to the superconducting phase. Our work establishes supermoiré lattices as a tunable parameter for designing quantum phases and as an effective tool for unraveling correlated phenomena in moiré materials.

Detecting individual light quanta is essential for quantum information, space exploration, advanced machine vision, and fundamental science. In this work, we introduce a single-photon detection mechanism using highly photosensitive nonequilibrium electron phases in moiré materials. Using tunable bands in bilayer graphene/hexagonal boron nitride superlattices, we engineer negative differential conductance and a sensitive bistable state capable of detecting single photons. Operating in this regime, we demonstrate single-photon counting at mid-infrared (11.3 micrometers) and visible wavelengths (675 nanometers) and temperatures up to 25 kelvin. This detector offers prospects for broadband, high-temperature quantum technologies with complementary metal-oxide semiconductor compatibility and seamless integration into photonic-integrated circuits. Our analysis suggests that the underlying mechanism originates from superlattice-induced negative differential velocity.

Moiré superlattices constitute a versatile platform to investigate emergent phenomena arising from the interplay of strong correlations and topology, while offering flexible in situ tunability. However, the fabrication of such moiré superlattices is challenging. It is difficult to achieve highly uniform devices with a precise twist angle because of the unintentional introduction of heterostrain, twist angle disorder, and angle/lattice relaxation during the nanofabrication process. This article introduces an optimized, experience-informed protocol for fabricating high-quality graphene-based moiré superlattice devices, focusing on a modified dry transfer technique. The transfer process is performed in a highly tunable, custom-built transfer setup that enables precise position, angle, and temperature control. By combining rigorous flake selection criteria, pre-cleaned bubble-free bottom gates, and graphene laser ablation, the moiré superlattice is constructed by deliberately overlaying twisted graphene flakes at a submicron speed at room temperature. Through precise control of the transfer process, the resulting graphene moiré superlattice devices exhibit high uniformity and desired twist angles. This optimized protocol addresses existing challenges in the fabrication of graphene-based moiré superlattice devices and paves the way for further advances in the rapidly evolving field of moiré materials.