Research Highlights
Bicircular Light Floquet Engineering of Magnetic Symmetry and its application to Cd3As2
Bicircular light (BCL) as a versatile way to control magnetic symmetries and topology in materials.
Effect of circular (CL) and bicircular light (BCl) on the edge states of Cd3As2.
We show that bicircular light (BCL) is a versatile way to control magnetic symmetries and topology in materials. The electric field of BCL, which is a superposition of two circularly polarized light waves with frequencies that are integer multiples of each other, traces out a rose pattern in the polarization plane that can be chosen to break selective symmetries, including spatial inversion. Using a realistic low-energy model, we theoretically demonstrate that the three-dimensional Dirac semimetal Cd3As2 is a promising platform for BCL Floquet engineering. Without strain, BCL irradiation induces a transition to a noncentrosymmetric magnetic Weyl semimetal phase with tunable energy separation between the Weyl nodes. In the presence of strain, we predict the emergence of a magnetic topological crystalline insulator with exotic unpinned surface Dirac states that are protected by a combination of twofold rotation and time reversal and can be controlled by light.
Bicircular Light Floquet Engineering of Magnetic Symmetry and Topology and Its Application to the Dirac Semimetal Cd3As2 , Thaís V. Trevisan, Pablo Villar Arribi, Olle Heinonen, Robert-Jan Slager and Peter P. Orth, Phys. Rev. Lett. 128, 066602 (2022).