Daily Overview: This post sorts papers by relevance to nickelate superconductors. Summaries are AI-generated and may contain errors. arXiv submission processing window: times are unavailable (UTC).

1. Electronic Nematicity Revealed by Polarized Ultrafast Spectroscopy in Bilayer La$_3$Ni$_2$O$_7$

Summary: Using polarized ultrafast pump-probe spectroscopy, the researchers comparatively investigated the normal-state electronic dynamics of bilayer La₃Ni₂O₇ and trilayer La₄Ni₃O₁₀ single crystals under ambient pressure. Both materials exhibit a density-wave transition accompanied by the opening of a quasiparticle relaxation bottleneck, yet their electronic responses display markedly different symmetries: trilayer La₄Ni₃O₁₀ remains optically isotropic across the entire temperature range, whereas bilayer La₃Ni₂O₇ shows clear twofold (C₂) rotational symmetry breaking—i.e., electronic nematicity—at low temperatures. This nematicity manifests in the anisotropy of slow quasiparticle relaxation dynamics and effective gap scale, and below 115 K it competes with a secondary isotropic order, leading to a non-monotonic temperature dependence of the nematic signal. This work reveals the presence of electronic nematic fluctuations in bilayer nickelates, which are absent in the trilayer system, suggesting a close relationship between electronic nematicity and high-pressure superconducting pairing in La₃Ni₂O₇, thereby providing key insights into the microscopic mechanism of this class of nickel-based superconductors.