Spontaneous gyrotropic electronic order in a transition-metal dichalcogenide
Chirality is ubiquitous in nature, and populations of opposite chiralities are surprisingly asymmetric at fundamental levels. Examples range from parity violation in the subatomic weak force to homochirality in biomolecules. The ability to achieve chirality-selective synthesis (chiral induction) is...
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Springer Science and Business Media LLC
2021
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| Online Access: | https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/129600 |
| _version_ | 1826202495664259072 |
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| author | Xu, Suyang Ma, Qiong Gao, Yang Kogar, Anshul Zong, Guo Mier Valdivia, Andrés M. Dinh, Thao H. Huang, Shin-Ming Singh, Bahadur Hsu, Chuang-Han Chang, Tay-Rong Ruff, Jacob P. C. Watanabe, Kenji Taniguchi, Takashi Lin, Hsin Karapetrov, Goran Xiao, Di Jarillo-Herrero, Pablo Gedik, Nuh |
| author2 | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Physics |
| author_facet | Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Physics Xu, Suyang Ma, Qiong Gao, Yang Kogar, Anshul Zong, Guo Mier Valdivia, Andrés M. Dinh, Thao H. Huang, Shin-Ming Singh, Bahadur Hsu, Chuang-Han Chang, Tay-Rong Ruff, Jacob P. C. Watanabe, Kenji Taniguchi, Takashi Lin, Hsin Karapetrov, Goran Xiao, Di Jarillo-Herrero, Pablo Gedik, Nuh |
| author_sort | Xu, Suyang |
| collection | MIT |
| description | Chirality is ubiquitous in nature, and populations of opposite chiralities are surprisingly asymmetric at fundamental levels. Examples range from parity violation in the subatomic weak force to homochirality in biomolecules. The ability to achieve chirality-selective synthesis (chiral induction) is of great importance in stereochemistry, molecular biology and pharmacology. In condensed matter physics, a crystalline electronic system is geometrically chiral when it lacks mirror planes, space-inversion centres or rotoinversion axes. Typically, geometrical chirality is predefined by the chiral lattice structure of a material, which is fixed on formation of the crystal. By contrast, in materials with gyrotropic order electrons spontaneously organize themselves to exhibit macroscopic chirality in an originally achiral lattice. Although such order—which has been proposed as the quantum analogue of cholesteric liquid crystals—has attracted considerable interest no clear observation or manipulation of gyrotropic order has been achieved so far. Here we report the realization of optical chiral induction and the observation of a gyrotropically ordered phase in the transition-metal dichalcogenide semimetal 1T-TiSe₂. We show that shining mid-infrared circularly polarized light on 1T-TiSe₂ while cooling it below the critical temperature leads to the preferential formation of one chiral domain. The chirality of this state is confirmed by the measurement of an out-of-plane circular photogalvanic current, the direction of which depends on the optical induction. Although the role of domain walls requires further investigation with local probes, the methodology demonstrated here can be applied to realize and control chiral electronic phases in other quantum materials. |
| first_indexed | 2024-09-23T12:08:24Z |
| format | Article |
| id | mit-1721.1/129600 |
| institution | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| last_indexed | 2024-09-23T12:08:24Z |
| publishDate | 2021 |
| publisher | Springer Science and Business Media LLC |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | mit-1721.1/1296002022-09-28T00:25:48Z Spontaneous gyrotropic electronic order in a transition-metal dichalcogenide Xu, Suyang Ma, Qiong Gao, Yang Kogar, Anshul Zong, Guo Mier Valdivia, Andrés M. Dinh, Thao H. Huang, Shin-Ming Singh, Bahadur Hsu, Chuang-Han Chang, Tay-Rong Ruff, Jacob P. C. Watanabe, Kenji Taniguchi, Takashi Lin, Hsin Karapetrov, Goran Xiao, Di Jarillo-Herrero, Pablo Gedik, Nuh Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Physics Chirality is ubiquitous in nature, and populations of opposite chiralities are surprisingly asymmetric at fundamental levels. Examples range from parity violation in the subatomic weak force to homochirality in biomolecules. The ability to achieve chirality-selective synthesis (chiral induction) is of great importance in stereochemistry, molecular biology and pharmacology. In condensed matter physics, a crystalline electronic system is geometrically chiral when it lacks mirror planes, space-inversion centres or rotoinversion axes. Typically, geometrical chirality is predefined by the chiral lattice structure of a material, which is fixed on formation of the crystal. By contrast, in materials with gyrotropic order electrons spontaneously organize themselves to exhibit macroscopic chirality in an originally achiral lattice. Although such order—which has been proposed as the quantum analogue of cholesteric liquid crystals—has attracted considerable interest no clear observation or manipulation of gyrotropic order has been achieved so far. Here we report the realization of optical chiral induction and the observation of a gyrotropically ordered phase in the transition-metal dichalcogenide semimetal 1T-TiSe₂. We show that shining mid-infrared circularly polarized light on 1T-TiSe₂ while cooling it below the critical temperature leads to the preferential formation of one chiral domain. The chirality of this state is confirmed by the measurement of an out-of-plane circular photogalvanic current, the direction of which depends on the optical induction. Although the role of domain walls requires further investigation with local probes, the methodology demonstrated here can be applied to realize and control chiral electronic phases in other quantum materials. AFOSR (Grant FA9550-16-1-0382) Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation (Grant GBMF4540 and GBMF4541) 2021-01-29T20:58:25Z 2021-01-29T20:58:25Z 2020-02 2018-09 Article http://purl.org/eprint/type/JournalArticle 0028-0836 1476-4687 https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/129600 Xu, Su-Yang et al. "Spontaneous gyrotropic electronic order in a transition-metal dichalcogenide." Nature 578, 7796 (February 2020): 545–549 © 2020 The Author(s) http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41586-020-2011-8 Nature 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. application/pdf Springer Science and Business Media LLC Prof. Gedik |
| spellingShingle | Xu, Suyang Ma, Qiong Gao, Yang Kogar, Anshul Zong, Guo Mier Valdivia, Andrés M. Dinh, Thao H. Huang, Shin-Ming Singh, Bahadur Hsu, Chuang-Han Chang, Tay-Rong Ruff, Jacob P. C. Watanabe, Kenji Taniguchi, Takashi Lin, Hsin Karapetrov, Goran Xiao, Di Jarillo-Herrero, Pablo Gedik, Nuh Spontaneous gyrotropic electronic order in a transition-metal dichalcogenide |
| title | Spontaneous gyrotropic electronic order in a transition-metal dichalcogenide |
| title_full | Spontaneous gyrotropic electronic order in a transition-metal dichalcogenide |
| title_fullStr | Spontaneous gyrotropic electronic order in a transition-metal dichalcogenide |
| title_full_unstemmed | Spontaneous gyrotropic electronic order in a transition-metal dichalcogenide |
| title_short | Spontaneous gyrotropic electronic order in a transition-metal dichalcogenide |
| title_sort | spontaneous gyrotropic electronic order in a transition metal dichalcogenide |
| url | https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/129600 |
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