[NCTS Physics Research Highlights] Tay-Rong Chang 'Axion optical induction of antiferromagnetic order', Nature Materials 22, 583 (2023)

• 2023-06-21
• Chen, Jhan Yu 陳詹喻
• Computational quantum materials Condensed Matter

Axion optical induction of antiferromagnetic order 軸子光學誘發反鐵磁有序態

Jian-Xiang Qiu, Christian Tzschaschel, Junyeong Ahn, Anyuan Gao, Houchen Li, Xin-Yue Zhang, Barun Ghosh, Chaowei Hu, Yu-Xuan Wang, Yu-Fei Liu, Damien Bérubé, Thao Dinh, Zhenhao Gong, Shang-Wei Lien, Sheng-Chin Ho, Bahadur Singh, Kenji Watanabe, Takashi Taniguchi, David C. Bell, Hai-Zhou Lu, Arun Bansil, Hsin Lin, Tay-Rong Chang*, Brian B. Zhou, Qiong Ma, Ashvin Vishwanath, Ni Ni & Su-Yang Xu
Nature Materials 22, 583 (2023)
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41563-023-01493-5

Using circularly polarized light to control quantum matter is a highly intriguing topic in physics, chemistry and biology. Previous works have demonstrated that both chirality and ferromagnetic states can be controlled by helicity-dependent optical. In this work, we discover that the circularly polarized light can control the antiferromagnetic (AFM) order in a 2D even-layer axion insulator MnBi2Te4. Our work shows that circularly polarized light provides an effective axion E⋅B field that is directly coupled to the AFM order in MnBi2Te4 and thus induced optically controllable.

使用圓偏振光來控制量子物質是物理、化學和生物中一個非常有趣的問題。先前的工作已證實手性和鐵磁態都可通過螺旋性的光來控制。在這工作中，我們發現圓偏振光可以控制二維偶層軸子絕緣體MnBi2Te4中的反鐵磁有序態。我們的工作表明圓偏振光提供了一個等效的軸子 E⋅B 場，它直接耦合到MnBi2Te4中的反鐵磁有序態，從而引起光學可控。