Quantum materials continue to surprise us with their rich and often unexpected behavior when pushed to their limits. By applying extreme conditions such as high pressure, we can tune their atomic and electronic landscapes in ways that reveal entirely new phenomena. In this talk, I will explore how pressure reshapes the balance between charge density waves (CDWs), superconductivity, and magnetism in two fascinating families of materials: transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) and transition metal halides. In TMDs, high pressure unveils a deep connection between CDW order and superconductivity, showing how one phase can give way or even strengthen the other. One striking example is BaFe2Al9, where recent studies reveal a dramatic enhancement of the CDW transition temperature from 110 K to 300 K under pressure the fastest rate ever observed (60 K/GPa). This remarkable behavior runs counter to what we see in conventional CDW materials and points to a unique coupling between lattice strain and electronic instability. In parallel, I’ll discuss how pressure profoundly alters magnetic interactions in transition metal halides, driving these systems into new and sometimes unexpected magnetic states. Together, these results illustrate how high pressure serves as a clean, powerful tool to manipulate quantum matter and unlock phases that remain hidden under ambient conditions.

The non-Hermitian skin effect (NHSE) is a fundamentally distinct phenomenon in non-Hermitian systems, and has no Hermitian analogs. It has lately reshaped the way we understand band structures and topology: the NHSE disrupts the bulk-boundary correspondence between open and periodic boundary conditions’ spectra. How to accurately characterize the NHSE is of importance. Thus, it prompts the development of the generalized Brillouin zone (GBZ) theory. In this talk, I shall introduce modified GBZ theory in non-Hermitian systems without well-defined translational invariance, which captures the influence of disorder, magnetic effects, and non-orientability on the non-Hermitian skin effect. This modified GBZ scheme reveals how the skin effect interacts with disorder or magnetic effects, and how a Möbius-strip configuration alters the skin mode’s localization behavior.
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