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Pseudo-Landau Thermal Diffusion

Jun Guo1,*, Guoqiang Xu2,3,*,†, Mengqi Liu4,1, Xue Zhou1,5, Guangming Tao6,7, and Cheng-Wei Qiu1,8,9,‡

  • 1Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, National University of Singapore, Kent Ridge 117583, Singapore
  • 2School of Electronic Science and Engineering, Southeast University, Nanjing 211189, China
  • 3Jiangsu Key Laboratory for Undersea Communications and Sensoring, China
  • 4Institute of Engineering Thermophysics, MOE Key Laboratory for Power Machinery and Engineering, School of Mechanical Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200240, China
  • 5Institute of Optics and Electronics, Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology, Nanjing, 210044, China
  • 6Research Center for Intelligent Fiber Devices and Equipment, State Key Laboratory of New Textile Materials and Advanced Processing, Wuhan National Laboratory for Optoelectronics, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430074, China
  • 7Center for Intelligent Health Interdisciplinary Science, Central China Normal University, Wuhan 430079, China
  • 8National University of Singapore Suzhou Research Institute, No. 377 Linquan Street, Suzhou, Jiangsu, China
  • 9Department of Physics, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore

  • *These authors contributed equally to this work.
  • †Contact author: guoqiang.xu@seu.edu.cn
  • ‡Contact author: chengwei.qiu@nus.edu.sg
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Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 056306 – Published 5 February, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/3smm-xtbc

Abstract

Landau quantization of two-dimensional free electrons and massless Dirac fermions plays a key role underlying many quantum phenomena in condensed matter physics. It usually requires the magnetic field, which arranges the charge carriers associated with the harmonic oscillation on a ladder of discrete Landau levels with a dissipationless edge state. Nevertheless, the presence of intrinsic dissipation and absence of a pseudomagnetic field in thermal diffusion precludes the observation of Landau quantization. Here, we report a recipe of creating a synthetic gauge serving as a pseudomagnetic field and achieve Landau quantization on real- and imaginary-valued spectra, on both of which complex pseudo-Landau levels are identified as isometric ladders. We experimentally observe the macroscopic quantum thermal Hall-like effect induced by dissipation, which is distinguished by a plateaulike effective thermal resistance. Our findings open up a unique paradigm for manipulating heat transfer and create an insightful platform for exploring dissipative non-Hermitian physics.

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Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 056306– Published 5 February, 2026
  • Received 17 June 2025
  • Revised 19 September 2025
  • Accepted 17 December 2025
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