Light-Induced Control of Magnetic Phases in Kitaev Quantum Magnets

Abstract

Leveraging coherent light-matter interaction in solids is a promising new direction towards control and functionalization of quantum materials, to potentially realize regimes inaccessible in equilibrium and stabilize new or useful states of matter. We show how driving the strongly spin-orbit coupled proximal Kitaev magnet $\alpha$-RuCl${}_3$ with circularly-polarized light can give rise to a novel ligand-mediated magneto-electric effect that both photo-induces a large dynamical effective magnetic field and dramatically alters the interplay of competing isotropic and anisotropic exchange interactions. We propose that tailored light pulses can nudge the material towards the elusive Kitaev quantum spin liquid as well as probe competing magnetic instabilities far from equilibrium, and predict that the transient competition of magnetic exchange processes can be readily observed via pump-probe spectroscopy.

14 pages, 9 figures

References in corpus (14)

• Non-Abelian Anyons and Topological Quantum Computation
• Mott Insulators in the Strong Spin-Orbit Coupling Limit: From Heisenberg to a Quantum Compass and Kitaev Models
• $\alpha$-RuCl3: a Spin-Orbit Assisted Mott Insulator on a Honeycomb Lattice
• Models and Materials for Generalized Kitaev Magnetism
• On the Origin of Zigzag Magnetic Order in Iridium Oxide Na2IrO3
• Nonthermal pathways to ultrafast control in quantum materials
• Magnetic order in $\alpha$-RuCl${}_3$: a honeycomb lattice quantum magnet with strong spin-orbit coupling
• Theory of the field-revealed Kitaev spin liquid
• Electronic Structure of the Kitaev Material $\alpha$-${\text{RuCl}}_3$ Probed by Photoemission and Inverse Photoemission Spectroscopies
• Phase diagram and spin correlations of the Kitaev-Heisenberg model: Importance of quantum effects
• Impact of off-diagonal exchange interactions on the Kitaev spin liquid state of $\alpha$-RuCl${}_3$
• Producing Coherent Excitations in Pumped Mott Antiferromagnetic Insulators
• Floquet engineering of Mott insulators with strong spin-orbit coupling
• Controlling ligand-mediated exchange interactions in periodically driven magnetic materials

Cited by in corpus (17)

• Floquet engineering of Kitaev quantum magnets
• Controlling the magnetic state of the proximate quantum spin liquid $\alpha$-RuCl${}_3$ with an optical cavity
• Photo-induced nonequilibrium states in Mott insulators
• Cavity engineering of solid-state materials without external driving
• Fractionalized Prethermalization in a Driven Quantum Spin Liquid
• Symmetry analysis of light-induced magnetic interactions via Floquet engineering
• Effects of topological and non-topological edge states on information propagation and scrambling in a Floquet spin chain
• Cavity-Vacuum-Induced Chiral Spin Liquids in Kagome Lattices: Tuning and Probing Topological Quantum Phases via Cavity Quantum Electrodynamics
• From linear to circular polarized light -- Floquet engineering in Kitaev-Heisenberg materials with Lissajous figures
• Scalar spin chirality induced by a circularly polarized electric field in a classical kagome magnet
• A set-up for Hard X-ray Time-resolved Resonant Inelastic X-ray Scattering at SwissFEL
• Controlling topology through targeted composite symmetry manipulation in magnetic systems
• Optical detection of bond-dependent and frustrated spin in the two-dimensional cobalt-based honeycomb antiferromagnet Cu3Co2SbO6
• Wideband covariance magnetometry below the diffraction limit
• Photoinduced Pseudospin Polarization in a Three-Orbital Hubbard Model
• Signatures of Floquet Engineering in the proximal Kitaev Quantum Spin Liquid H${}_3$LiIr${}_2$O${}_6$ by tr-RIXS
• Ground state of the staggered Heisenberg-$\Gamma$ honeycomb model in a magnetic field