Quantized circular photogalvanic effect in Weyl semimetals

• Published in: Nature communications Vol. 8; no. 1; p. 15995
• Main Authors: de Juan, Fernando, Grushin, Adolfo G., Morimoto, Takahiro, Moore, Joel E
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Nature Publishing Group UK 06.07.2017; Nature Publishing Group; Nature Portfolio
• Subjects: 639/766/119/2792; Circular polarization; Condensed Matter; Electromagnetism; Graphene; Humanities and Social Sciences; Incident light; Injection; Inversion; Metalloids; multidisciplinary; Photoelectric effect; Photoelectric emission; Physics; Polarization; Science; Science (multidisciplinary); Switches; Symmetry; Topology
• ISSN: 2041-1723; 2041-1723
• DOI: 10.1038/ncomms15995

The circular photogalvanic effect (CPGE) is the part of a photocurrent that switches depending on the sense of circular polarization of the incident light. It has been consistently observed in systems without inversion symmetry and depends on non-universal material details. Here we find that in a class of Weyl semimetals (for example, SrSi 2 ) and three-dimensional Rashba materials (for example, doped Te) without inversion and mirror symmetries, the injection contribution to the CPGE trace is effectively quantized in terms of the fundamental constants e , h , c and with no material-dependent parameters. This is so because the CPGE directly measures the topological charge of Weyl points, and non-quantized corrections from disorder and additional bands can be small over a significant range of incident frequencies. Moreover, the magnitude of the CPGE induced by a Weyl node is relatively large, which enables the direct detection of the monopole charge with current techniques. Photocurrent switches depend on circular polarization of the incident light. Here, De Juan et al . report a quantized circular photogalvanic effect as a measure of the topological charge of Weyl points in a class of Weyl semimetals and three-dimensional Rashba materials.