Engineering transistor-like optical gain in two-dimensional materials with Berry curvature dipoles

Abstract

Semiconductor transistors are essential elements of electronic circuits as they enable, for example, the isolation or amplification of voltage signals. While conventional transistors are point-type (lumped-element) devices, it may be highly interesting to realize a distributed transistor-type optical response in a bulk material. Here, we show that low-symmetry two-dimensional metallic systems may be the ideal solution to implement such a distributed-transistor response. To this end, using the semiclassical Boltzmann equation approach, we characterize the optical conductivity of a two-dimensional material under a static electric bias. It is found that similar to the nonlinear Hall effect, the electron transport depends on the Berry curvature dipole. Our analysis reveals that the electro-optic effect modifies the optical conductivity of the material, breaking the electromagnetic reciprocity and yielding a dynamical response that imitates that of a transistor but in a distributed volume. Furthermore, the effective conductivity tensor can be non-Hermitian, opening the possibility of optical gain. To maximize the non-Hermitian response, we explore the specific case of strained twisted bilayer graphene. Our analysis reveals that the optical gain for incident light transmitted through the biased system depends on the light polarization, and can be quite large, especially for multilayer configurations.

References in corpus (11)

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• Efficient Fizeau Drag from Dirac electrons in monolayer graphene
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• Nonreciprocal and non-Hermitian material response inspired by semiconductor transistors
• Excitonic Magneto-Optical Kerr Effect in 2D Transition Metal Dichalcogenides Induced by Spin Proximity

Cited by in corpus (11)

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• Non-linear Hall Effects: Mechanisms and Materials
• The Berry dipole photovoltaic demon and the thermodynamics of photo-current generation within the optical gap of metals
• Equivalence of semiclassical and response theories for second-order nonlinear ac Hall effects
• Directional dependence of the plasmonic gain and nonreciprocity in drift-current biased graphene
• Chiral terahertz lasing with Berry curvature dipoles
• Spontaneous Symmetry Breaking of Time-Reversal-Symmetry and Time-Crystal States in Chiral Atomic Systems
• Tunable optical bistability of two-dimensional tilted Dirac system
• Berry Curvature Dipole-Induced Chiral Terahertz Gain and Lasing Threshold in Bulk Tellurium
• Gain-loss-engineering: a new platform for extreme anisotropic thermal photon tunneling
• Superconducting Berry Curvature Dipole