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Published February 15, 2022 | Supplemental Material + Submitted + Published
Journal Article Open

Fermionic Chern insulator from twisted light with linear polarization

Abstract

The breaking of time-reversal symmetry is a crucial ingredient to topological bands. It can occur intrinsically in materials with magnetic order, or be induced by external fields, such as magnetic fields in quantum Hall systems or circularly polarized light fields in Floquet Chern insulators. Apart from polarization, photons can carry another degree of freedom, orbital angular momentum, through which time-reversal symmetry can be broken. In this Letter we pose the question of whether this property allows for inducing topological bands via a linearly polarized but twisted light beam. To this end we study a graphenelike model of electrons on a honeycomb lattice interacting with a twisted light field. To identify the topological behavior of the electrons, we calculate their local markers of Chern number and monitor the presence of in-gap edge states. Our results are shown to be fully analogous to the behavior found in paradigmatic models for static and driven Chern insulators, and realizing the state is experimentally straightforward. With this, our work establishes a mechanism for generating fermionic topological phases of matter that can harness the central phase singularity of an optical vortex beam.

Additional Information

© 2022 American Physical Society. (Received 29 September 2020; revised 16 November 2021; accepted 31 January 2022; published 9 February 2022) We thank Gil Refael for enlightening discussions. U.B., T.G., and M.L. acknowledge the ERC AdG NOQIA, Agencia Estatal de Investigación ("Severo Ochoa" Center of Excellence CEX2019-000910-S, Plan National FIDEUA PID2019-106901GB-I00/10.13039 / 501100011033, FPI, QUANTERA MAQS PCI2019-111828-2 / 10.13039/501100011033), Spanish Ministry MINECO (National Plan 15, Grant FISICATEAMO No. FIS2016-79508-P, SEVERO OCHOA No. SEV-2015-0522, FPI), European Social Fund, Fundació Cellex, Fundació Mir-Puig, Generalitat de Catalunya (AGAUR Grant No. 2017SGR 1341, CERCA program, QuantumCAT U16-011424, cofunded by ERDF Operational Program of Catalonia 2014-2020), EU Horizon 2020 FET-OPEN OPTOLogic (Grant No. 899794), and the National Science Centre, Poland-Symfonia Grant No. 2016/20/W/ST4/00314, Marie Skłodowska-Curie Grant STREDCH No. 101029393, "La Caixa" Junior Leaders fellowships (ID100010434), and EU Horizon 2020 under Marie Skłodowska-Curie Grant Agreement No. 847648 (LCF/BQ/PI19/11690013, LCF/BQ/PI20/11760031, LCF/BQ/PR20/11770012). S.C. acknowledges support from the Institute of Quantum Information and Matter, an NSF Frontier Center funded by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation. T.G. acknowledges financial support from a fellowship granted by the Caixa Foundation (ID100010434, Fellowship Code No. LCF/BQ/PI19/11690013). U.B. acknowledges Cellex-ICFO-MPQ Fellowship funding. A.S.J. acknowledges funding from Marie Skodowska-Curie Grant Agreement No. 754510 (PROBIST).

Attached Files

Published - PhysRevB.105.L081406.pdf

Submitted - 2006.10688.pdf

Supplemental Material - SUPP_MAT.pdf

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Additional details

Created:
August 20, 2023
Modified:
October 23, 2023