Terahertz Kerr effect in a methylammonium lead bromide perovskite crystal

Abstract

We have observed short-lived optical birefringence in a CH${}_3$NH${}_3$PbBr${}_3$ single crystal induced by a powerful nearly single-cycle terahertz pulse. Apart from the instantaneous contribution that follows the profile of the squared pump electric field, the recorded anisotropy signal contains an exponential component decaying in $\sim$ 350 fs, underdamped oscillations at the frequency of $\sim$ 0.16 THz and an intermediate picosecond relaxation process with a Gaussian tail. We associate these three non-trivial features with, respectively, Kerr effect in the inorganic lattice, terahertz-induced transient alignment of CH${}_3$NH${}_3^{+}$ cations, and their coherent rotation excited by the terahertz pulse in a Raman process.

8 pages, 4 figures

References in corpus (4)

• Revealing the role of organic cations in hybrid halide perovskites CH3NH3PbI3
• Slow stretched-exponential and fast compressed-exponential relaxation from local event dynamics
• Decoding Ultrafast Polarization Responses in Lead Halide Perovskites by the Two-Dimensional Optical Kerr Effect
• Hot Polarons with Trapped Excitons and Octahedra-Twist Phonons in CH3NH3PbBr3 Hybrid Perovskite Nanowires

Cited by in corpus (3)

• Nonlinear THz Control of the Lead Halide Perovskite Lattice
• Discovery of enhanced lattice dynamics in a single-layered hybrid perovskite
• Terahertz ionic Kerr effect: Two-phonon contribution to the nonlinear optical response in insulators