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Orbital Inverse Faraday and Cotton-Mouton Effects in Hall Fluids

Gabriel Cardoso1, Erlend Syljuåsen1,2, and Alexander V. Balatsky1,3

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Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 016502 – Published 2 January, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/z4db-gt69

Abstract

We report two light-induced orbital magnetization effects in quantum Hall (QH) fluids, stemming from their transverse response. The first is a purely transverse contribution to the inverse Faraday effect (IFE), where circularly polarized light induces a dc magnetization by stirring the charged fluid. This contribution dominates the IFE in the QH regime. The second is the orbital inverse Cotton-Mouton effect (ICME), in which linearly polarized light generates a dc magnetization. Since the applied field in the ICME does not break time-reversal symmetry, the induced magnetization directly probes the chiral orbital response of the fluid at the driving frequency. We estimate that the resulting magnetization lies in the range of 0.5–10 Bohr magnetons per charge carrier in materials such as graphene and transition-metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) in the QH regime. Finally, we show that the induced magnetization is accompanied by a local correction to the static particle density, enabling optical quantum printing of density profiles into the QH fluid.

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References (41)

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Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 016502– Published 2 January, 2026
  • Received 8 August 2025
  • Accepted 11 December 2025
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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. Funded by Bibsam.

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