Population inversion and ultrafast terahertz nonlinearity of transient Dirac fermions in <math xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"><mrow><msub><mi>Cd</mi><mn>3</mn></msub><msub><mi>As</mi><mn>2</mn></msub></mrow></math>

Changqing Zhu; Patrick Pilch; Renato M. A. Dantas; Anneke Reinold; Yunkun Yang; Faxian Xiu; Amilcar Bedoya-Pinto; Stuart S. P. Parkin; Roderich Moessner; Zhe Wang

doi:10.1103/PhysRevB.109.L201111

Letter

Population inversion and ultrafast terahertz nonlinearity of transient Dirac fermions in ${Cd}_{3} {As}_{2}$

Changqing Zhu ¹, Patrick Pilch ¹, Renato M. A. Dantas^2,3,4,*, Anneke Reinold ¹, Yunkun Yang^5,6,7, Faxian Xiu^5,6, Amilcar Bedoya-Pinto^8,9, Stuart S. P. Parkin ⁸, Roderich Moessner² et al.

Zhe Wang ^1,†

¹Department of Physics, TU Dortmund University, Dortmund 44227, Germany
²Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems, Dresden 01187, Germany
³Department of Physics, University of Basel, Basel 4056, Switzerland
⁴Center of Physics, University of Minho, Braga 4704-553, Portugal
⁵State Key Laboratory of Surface Physics and Department of Physics, Fudan University, Shanghai 200232, China
⁶Shanghai Research Center for Quantum Sciences, Shanghai 201315, China
⁷Beijing Academy of Quantum Information Sciences, Beijing 100193, China
⁸Max Planck Institute for Microstructure Physics, Halle (Saale) 06120, Germany
⁹Institute of Molecular Science, University of Valencia, Paterna 46980, Spain

^*renatodantas@fisica.uminho.pt
^†zhe.wang@tu-dortmund.de

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Phys. Rev. B 109, L201111 – Published 10 May, 2024

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.109.L201111

Abstract

Harmonic generation provides an efficient tool for the study of ultrafast nonlinear dynamics. We report on time-resolved optical-pump terahertz harmonic generation spectroscopic investigation of ultrafast nonlinearity in a prototypical three-dimensional Dirac semimetal, ${Cd}_{3} {As}_{2}$ . A transient population inversion characterized by excessive nonthermal Dirac electrons and holes is found to be very sensitive and responsive to a periodic terahertz drive, leading to very efficient terahertz third-harmonic generation. Based on the Boltzmann transport theory, we analyze the terahertz field-driven kinetics of the transient Dirac fermions that is responsible for the observed strong terahertz nonlinearity.

Physical Review B

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Population inversion and ultrafast terahertz nonlinearity of transient Dirac fermions in ${Cd}_{3} {As}_{2}$

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Population inversion and ultrafast terahertz nonlinearity of transient Dirac fermions in Cd3As2

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Population inversion and ultrafast terahertz nonlinearity of transient Dirac fermions in ${Cd}_{3} {As}_{2}$