Lightwave-controlled band engineering in quantum materials

Abstract

Stacking and twisting atom-thin sheets create superlattice structures with unique emergent properties, while tailored light fields can manipulate coherent electron transport on ultrafast timescales. The unification of these two approaches may lead to ultrafast creation and manipulation of band structure properties, which is a crucial objective for the advancement of quantum technology. Here, we address this by demonstrating a tailored lightwave-driven analogue to twisted layer stacking. This results in sub-femtosecond control of time-reversal symmetry breaking and thereby band structure engineering in a hexagonal boron nitride monolayer. The results practically demonstrate the realization of the topological Haldane model in an insulator. Twisting the lightwave relative to the lattice orientation enables switching between band configurations, providing unprecedented control over the magnitude and location of the band gap, and curvature. A resultant asymmetric population at complementary quantum valleys lead to a measurable valley Hall current, detected via optical harmonic polarimetry. The universality and robustness of the demonstrated sub-femtosecond control opens a new way to band structure engineering on the fly paving a way towards large-scale ultrafast quantum devices for real-world applications.

4 pages main text, 4 figures

References in corpus (9)

• The electronic properties of graphene
• Valley polarization in MoS2 monolayers by optical pumping
• The Valley Hall Effect in MoS2 Transistors
• Light-Induced Valleytronics in Pristine Graphene
• Observation of light driven band structure via multi-band high harmonic spectroscopy
• Tunable and giant valley-selective Hall effect in gapped bilayer graphene
• Suppression of individual peaks in two-colour high harmonic generation
• Light-field control of real and virtual charge carriers
• Attosecond correlated electron dynamics at C${}_{60}$ giant plasmon resonance

Cited by in corpus (21)

• The Application of Tailored Fields for Studying Chirality and Symmetry
• Valley Polarization-Electric Dipole Interference and Nonlinear Chiral Selection Rules in Monolayer WSe${}_2$
• Light-induced quantum tunnelling current in graphene
• Quantized Hall drift in a frequency-encoded photonic Chern insulator
• Strong-Field Bloch Electron Interferometry for Band Structure Retrieval
• Attosecond All-Optical Retrieval of Valley Polarization via Circular Dichroism in Transient Absorption
• Programmable generation of counterrotating bicircular light pulses in the multi-terahertz frequency range
• Two-color laser control of photocurrent and high harmonics in graphene
• Polarization textures in crystal supercells with topological bands
• Topological phase transitions via attosecond x-ray absorption spectroscopy
• Monolayer transition metal dichalcogenides under finite-pulse polarized radiation
• High-purity valley-polarized currents induced by bichromatic optical fields in two-dimensional materials
• Direct measurement of broken time-reversal symmetry in centrosymmetric and non-centrosymmetric atomically thin crystals with nonlinear Kerr rotation
• Valley Gapless Semiconductor: Models and Applications
• Light-induced inverse spin Hall effect and field-induced circular photogalvanic effect in GaAs revealed by two-dimensional terahertz Fourier analysis
• Bulk photogalvanic current control and gap spectroscopy in 2D hexagonal materials
• Haldane graphene billiards versus relativistic neutrino billiards
• Gyrotropic Magnetic Effect in Black Phosphorus Irradiated with Bicircular Light
• Ultrafast Optical Control of Multi-Valley States in 2D SnS
• Optical control of electrons in a Floquet topological insulator
• Floquet engineering with spatially non-uniform driving fields