When Chiral Photons Meet Chiral Fermions: Photoinduced Anomalous Hall Effects in Weyl Semimetals
The Weyl semimetal is characterized by three-dimensional linear band touching points called Weyl nodes. These nodes come in pairs with opposite chiralities. We show that the coupling of circularly polarized photons with these chiral electrons generates a Hall conductivity without any applied magneti...
| Main Authors: | , , , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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American Physical Society
2016
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| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/100969 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2119-4441 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7809-8157 |
| _version_ | 1826202469789597696 |
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| author | Chan, Ching-Kit Lee, Patrick A. Burch, Kenneth S. Han, Jung Hoon Ran, Ying |
| author2 | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Materials Processing Center |
| author_facet | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Materials Processing Center Chan, Ching-Kit Lee, Patrick A. Burch, Kenneth S. Han, Jung Hoon Ran, Ying |
| author_sort | Chan, Ching-Kit |
| collection | MIT |
| description | The Weyl semimetal is characterized by three-dimensional linear band touching points called Weyl nodes. These nodes come in pairs with opposite chiralities. We show that the coupling of circularly polarized photons with these chiral electrons generates a Hall conductivity without any applied magnetic field in the plane orthogonal to the light propagation. This phenomenon comes about because with all three Pauli matrices exhausted to form the three-dimensional linear dispersion, the Weyl nodes cannot be gapped. Rather, the net influence of chiral photons is to shift the positions of the Weyl nodes. Interestingly, the momentum shift is tightly correlated with the chirality of the node to produce a net anomalous Hall signal. Application of our proposal to the recently discovered TaAs family of Weyl semimetals leads to an order-of-magnitude estimate of the photoinduced Hall conductivity which is within the experimentally accessible range. |
| first_indexed | 2024-09-23T12:07:57Z |
| format | Article |
| id | mit-1721.1/100969 |
| institution | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-09-23T12:07:57Z |
| publishDate | 2016 |
| publisher | American Physical Society |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | mit-1721.1/1009692022-09-28T00:21:54Z When Chiral Photons Meet Chiral Fermions: Photoinduced Anomalous Hall Effects in Weyl Semimetals Chan, Ching-Kit Lee, Patrick A. Burch, Kenneth S. Han, Jung Hoon Ran, Ying Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Materials Processing Center Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Physics Chan, Ching-Kit Lee, Patrick A. The Weyl semimetal is characterized by three-dimensional linear band touching points called Weyl nodes. These nodes come in pairs with opposite chiralities. We show that the coupling of circularly polarized photons with these chiral electrons generates a Hall conductivity without any applied magnetic field in the plane orthogonal to the light propagation. This phenomenon comes about because with all three Pauli matrices exhausted to form the three-dimensional linear dispersion, the Weyl nodes cannot be gapped. Rather, the net influence of chiral photons is to shift the positions of the Weyl nodes. Interestingly, the momentum shift is tightly correlated with the chirality of the node to produce a net anomalous Hall signal. Application of our proposal to the recently discovered TaAs family of Weyl semimetals leads to an order-of-magnitude estimate of the photoinduced Hall conductivity which is within the experimentally accessible range. United States. Dept. of Energy (Grant DE-FG02-03-ER46076) 2016-01-25T14:35:12Z 2016-01-25T14:35:12Z 2016-01 2015-11 2016-01-15T23:00:02Z Article http://purl.org/eprint/type/JournalArticle 0031-9007 1079-7114 http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/100969 Chan, Ching-Kit, Patrick A. Lee, Kenneth S. Burch, Jung Hoon Han, and Ying Ran. "When Chiral Photons Meet Chiral Fermions: Photoinduced Anomalous Hall Effects in Weyl Semimetals." Phys. Rev. Lett. 116, 026805 (January 2016). © 2016 American Physical Society https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2119-4441 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7809-8157 en http://dx.doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.116.026805 Physical Review Letters Article is made available in accordance with the publisher's policy and may be subject to US copyright law. Please refer to the publisher's site for terms of use. American Physical Society application/pdf American Physical Society American Physical Society |
| spellingShingle | Chan, Ching-Kit Lee, Patrick A. Burch, Kenneth S. Han, Jung Hoon Ran, Ying When Chiral Photons Meet Chiral Fermions: Photoinduced Anomalous Hall Effects in Weyl Semimetals |
| title | When Chiral Photons Meet Chiral Fermions: Photoinduced Anomalous Hall Effects in Weyl Semimetals |
| title_full | When Chiral Photons Meet Chiral Fermions: Photoinduced Anomalous Hall Effects in Weyl Semimetals |
| title_fullStr | When Chiral Photons Meet Chiral Fermions: Photoinduced Anomalous Hall Effects in Weyl Semimetals |
| title_full_unstemmed | When Chiral Photons Meet Chiral Fermions: Photoinduced Anomalous Hall Effects in Weyl Semimetals |
| title_short | When Chiral Photons Meet Chiral Fermions: Photoinduced Anomalous Hall Effects in Weyl Semimetals |
| title_sort | when chiral photons meet chiral fermions photoinduced anomalous hall effects in weyl semimetals |
| url | http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/100969 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2119-4441 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7809-8157 |
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