Photocurrent-driven transient symmetry breaking in the Weyl semimetal TaAs

Journal Article · Mon Nov 08 00:00:00 EST 2021 · Nature Materials

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1038/s41563-021-01126-9· OSTI ID:1843039

Sirica, Nicholas Steven  ^[1]; Orth, Peter P.  ^[2]; Scheurer, Mathias S.  ^[3]; Dai, Yaomin  ^[4]; Lee, Min Chul  ^[1]; Padmanabhan, Prashat  ^[1]; Mix, La Moyne Tyler  ^[1]; Teitelbaum, S. W. ^[5]; Trigo, M. ^[6]; Zhao, L. X. ^[7]; Chen, G. F.  ^[7]; Xu, Bing ^[7]; Yang, Run ^[7]; Shen, Bing ^[8]; Hu, C. ^[9]; Lee, Chi Cheng ^[10]; Lin, H.  ^[11]; Cochran, T. A. ^[12]; Trugman, Stuart Alan  ^[1]; Zhu, Jianxin  ^[1] ; Hasan, M. Z.  ^[13]; Ni, Ni  ^[9]; Qiu, X. G. ^[7]; Taylor, Antoinette Jane ^[1]; Yarotski, Dmitry Anatolievitch  ^[1]; Prasankumar, Rohit Prativadi  ^[1]

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1. Los Alamos National Lab. (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
2. Ames Lab., Ames, IA (United States); Iowa State Univ., Ames, IA (United States)
3. Univ. of Innsbruck (Austria)
4. Los Alamos National Lab. (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States); Nanjing Univ. (China)
5. Arizona State Univ., Tempe, AZ (United States)
6. SLAC National Accelerator Lab., Menlo Park, CA (United States)
7. Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Beijing (China)
8. Univ. of California, Los Angeles, CA (United States); State Key Laboratory of Optoelectronic Materials and Technologies, Guangzhou (China)
9. Univ. of California, Los Angeles, CA (United States)
10. Tamkang Univ., Taipei (Taiwan)
11. Academia Sinica, Taipei (Taiwan)
12. Princeton Univ., NJ (United States)
13. Princeton Univ., NJ (United States); Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)

Symmetry plays a central role in conventional and topological phases of matter, making the ability to optically drive symmetry changes a critical step in developing future technologies that rely on such control. Topological materials, like topological semimetals, are particularly sensitive to a breaking or restoring of time-reversal and crystalline symmetries, which affect both bulk and surface electronic states. While previous studies have focused on controlling symmetry via coupling to the crystal lattice, we demonstrate here an all-electronic mechanism based on photocurrent generation. Using second harmonic generation spectroscopy as a sensitive probe of symmetry changes, we observe an ultrafast breaking of time-reversal and spatial symmetries following femtosecond optical excitation in the prototypical type-I Weyl semimetal TaAs. Here, our results show that optically driven photocurrents can be tailored to explicitly break electronic symmetry in a generic fashion, opening up the possibility of driving phase transitions between symmetry-protected states on ultrafast timescales.

• Research Organization: Univ. of California, Los Angeles, CA (United States); SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory (SLAC), Menlo Park, CA (United States); Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States); Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE Office of Science (SC), Basic Energy Sciences (BES); National Science Foundation (NSF); USDOE Laboratory Directed Research and Development (LDRD) Program; USDOE Office of Science (SC), Basic Energy Sciences (BES). Materials Sciences & Engineering Division
• Grant/Contract Number: SC0011978; AC02-07CH11358; AC02-76SF00515; SC0021117; FG02-05ER46200; 20200240ER; DMR-1664842; DGE-1656466; MOST-108-2112-M-032-010-MY2; 89233218CNA000001; AC02-05CH11231
• OSTI ID: 1843039
• Alternate ID(s): OSTI ID: 1869821; OSTI ID: 1872337; OSTI ID: 1962542
• Report Number(s): LA-UR-20-23580; 20200240ER; 20200240ER; DMR-1664842; DGE-1656466; MOST 108-2112-M-032-010-MY2
• Journal Information: Nature Materials, Vol. 21, Issue 1; ISSN 1476-1122
• Publisher: Springer Nature
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CHEMISTRY
Nonlinear optics
Topological matter
Material Science
Topological Semimetals
Nonlinear Optics