Optical Control of Chiral Charge Pumping in a Topological Weyl Semimetal

Abstract

Solids with topologically robust electronic states exhibit unusual electronic and optical transport properties that do not exist in other materials. A particularly interesting example is chiral charge pumping, the so-called chiral anomaly, in recently discovered topological Weyl semimetals, where simultaneous application of parallel DC electric and magnetic fields creates an imbalance in the number of carriers of opposite topological charge (chirality). Here, using time-resolved terahertz measurements on the Weyl semimetal TaAs in a magnetic field, we optically interrogate the chiral anomaly by dynamically pumping the chiral charges and monitoring their subsequent relaxation. Theory based on Boltzmann transport shows that the observed effects originate from an optical nonlinearity in the chiral charge pumping process. Our measurements reveal that the chiral population relaxation time is much greater than 1 ns. The observation of terahertz-controlled chiral carriers with long coherence times and topological protection suggests the application of Weyl semimetals for quantum optoelectronic technology.

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Cited by in corpus (13)

• Review of experiments on the chiral anomaly in Dirac-Weyl semimetals
• Pseudo-magnetic field-induced ultra-slow carrier dynamics in periodically strained graphene
• Topological Hall effect in the antiferromagnetic Dirac semimetal EuAgAs
• Probing charge pumping and relaxation of the chiral anomaly in a Dirac semimetal
• Topological frequency conversion in Weyl semimetals
• Chiral anomalies in 3D spin-orbit coupled metals: electrical, thermal, and gravitational anomaly
• Anomalous Electromagnetic Field Penetration in a Weyl or Dirac Semimetal
• Anomalous Gurzhi effect
• Laser induced surface magnetization in Floquet-Weyl semimetals
• Ultrafast Carrier Relaxation and Second Harmonic Generation in a Higher-Fold Weyl Fermionic System PtAl
• Van Roosbroeck's equations with topological terms: the case of Weyl semimetals
• Research on topological materials using ultrafast spectroscopy
• Current response to axial gauge fields in noncentrosymmetric magnetic Weyl semimetals