Configurational Electronic States in Layered Transition Metal DichalcogenidesVodeb, Jaka (Avtor) Mihailović, Dragan (Mentor) Kabanov, Viktor V. (Komentor) charge density wavestransition metal dichalcogenidespolaronscharged lattice gas modelMonte Carlo simulationsglassesphase transitions and critical phenomenascanning tunnelling microscopyquantum computingquantum annealingMesoscopic irregularly ordered and even amorphous self-assembled electronic structures were recently reported in two-dimensional metallic dichalcogenides (TMDs), created and manipulated with short light pulses or by charge injection. Apart from promising new all-electronic memory devices, such states are of great fundamental importance, since such aperiodic states cannot be described in terms of conventional charge-density-wave (CDW) physics. In this thesis, we first address the problem of metastable mesoscopic configurational charge ordering in TMDs with a sparsely filled charged lattice gas model in which electrons are subject only to screened Coulomb repulsion. The model correctly predicts commensurate CDW states corresponding to different TMDs at magic filling fractions $f_m=1/3,1/4,1/9,1/13,1/16$. Doping away from $f_m$ results either in multiple near degenerate configurational states, or an amorphous state at the correct density observed by scanning tunneling microscopy. Quantum fluctuations between degenerate states predict a quantum charge liquid at low temperatures, revealing a new generalized viewpoint on both regular, irregular and amorphous charge ordering in transition metal dichalcogenides. During the development of our model we also found it useful in three other examples of experiments. The first application of the model deals with theoretical modeling of the non-equilibrium amorphous state in 1T-TaS$_2$. The second application deals with quantum billiards of correlated electrons confined in triangular transition metal dichalcogenide monolayer nanostructures created by laser quench. The third and last application of our model deals with a time-domain phase diagram of metastable states in a charge ordered quantum material. Finally, we extend our classical version of the model to the quantum regime and deploy it on D-Wave’s quantum computer. We explore the observation of quantum domain melting and its simulation with a quantum computer.20212021-12-01 09:23:04Doktorsko delo/naloga133565sl