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https://hasegawa.issp.u-tokyo.ac.jp/quantum-nanosci-seminar-240202

Electronic liquid crystal (ELC) phases are spontaneous symmetry breaking states arisen from strong electron correlation in solids such as cuprates and iron pnictides. Topological materials with symmetry protected Dirac or Weyl fermions, however, are mostly weakly correlated so the occurrence of ELC is rare thereof. Here, we report a direct observation of ELC phases in Dirac nodal line (DNL) semimetal GdSb_xTe_2-x. We discover real-space electronic nanostructures of incommensurate checkerboard modulation and intense local nematic order. We show chemical substitution generates local electronic nematicity and increases Peierls instability towards incommensurate checkerboard modulation before undergoing a charge density wave – orthorhombic transition. We also observe nematicity in our quasiparticle scattering interference imaging, which detects linearly dispersive q-vectors, consistent with the calculated topological band structure scattering off C2-symmetric dopants. Our results on correlated DNL semimetal, GdSb_xTe_2-x highlight the importance of dopant atoms in the ELC phases, opening a pathway towards a further microscopic understanding of the interplay among disorder, topology and electron correlation.