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Light-induced topological phase transitions and anomalous thermal transport in d-wave altermagnets

Ayesha Maryam1,*, Muzamil Shah1,2,*,†, Kashif Sabeeh1,‡, and Reza Asgari3,4

  • *These authors contributed equally to this work.
  • †Contact author: muzamil@qau.edu.pk
  • ‡Contact author: kashifsabeeh@hotmail.com
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Phys. Rev. B 114, 175401 – Published 1 September, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/8x4v-gf3y

Abstract

We study intrinsic thermal transport and Floquet-engineered topology in a two-dimensional d-wave altermagnetic topological insulator powered by linearly polarized light. We analyze the anomalous Hall, Nernst, and thermal Hall conductivities, as well as their spin-resolved equivalents, and develop closed-form formulas for the Berry curvature using an analytically calculated high-frequency effective Hamiltonian. We demonstrate that linearly polarized light, in contrast to conventional antiferromagnets, breaks the symmetry connecting spin sectors in altermagnets, allowing a series of spin-selective topological phase transitions from a quantum spin Hall state to a spin-polarized Chern insulator and finally to a trivial phase. The Nernst response shows substantial thermal activation and significant sensitivity to the gap size in the Chern domain, but both the electrical and thermal Hall responses become quantized and meet the anomalous Wiedemann-Franz law. Every anomalous transport coefficient exhibits a distinctive d-wave dependence on the polarization angle, reversing sign under orthogonal rotation and vanishing at symmetry-restoring directions. Our findings show a path to all-optical regulation of topological and caloritronic responses beyond traditional magnetic systems and establish thermal transport as a sensitive probe of altermagnetic order.

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Phys. Rev. B 114, 175401– Published 1 September, 2026
  • Received 24 April 2026
  • Revised 25 June 2026
  • Accepted 31 July 2026
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Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI.

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