- Physical Review Journals
All JournalsPhysics Magazine

Physical Review Research

Reuse & Permissions

It is not necessary to obtain permission to reuse this article or its components as it is available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI are maintained. Please note that some figures may have been included with permission from other third parties. It is your responsibility to obtain the proper permission from the rights holder directly for these figures.

Export citation

Export citation

Choose format for download:

Download Citation
  • Letter
  • Open Access

Light-induced control of magnetic phases in Kitaev quantum magnets

Adithya Sriram and Martin Claassen*

  • Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia 19104, Pennsylvania and Center for Computational Quantum Physics, Flatiron Institute, Simons Foundation, New York City 10010, New York

  • *claassen@sas.upenn.edu
PDF

Phys. Rev. Research 4, L032036 – Published 1 September, 2022

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevResearch.4.L032036

Abstract

Leveraging coherent light-matter interaction in solids is a promising new direction toward control and functionalization of quantum materials to potentially realize regimes inaccessible in equilibrium, and stabilize new or useful states of matter. We show how driving the strongly spin-orbit coupled proximal Kitaev magnet α−RuCl3 with circularly polarized light can give rise to a ligand-mediated magneto-electric effect that both photo induces an effective magnetic field and dramatically alters the interplay of competing exchange interactions. We propose that tailored light pulses can nudge the material toward the elusive Kitaev quantum spin liquid as well as probe competing magnetic instabilities far from equilibrium, and predict that the transient competition of magnetic exchange processes can be readily observed via pump-probe spectroscopy.

View figure in article

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Article Text

Supplemental Material

References (36)

  1. B. Keimer and J. E. Moore, The physics of quantum materials, Nat. Phys. 13, 1045 (2017).
  2. D. N. Basov, R. D. Averitt, and D. Hsieh, Towards properties on demand in quantum materials, Nat. Mater. 16, 1077 (2017).
  3. A. de la Torre, D. M. Kennes, M. Claassen, S. Gerber, J. W. McIver, and M. A. Sentef, Nonthermal pathways to ultrafast control in quantum materials, Rev. Mod. Phys. 93, 041002 (2021).
  4. T. Oka and S. Kitamura, Floquet engineering of quantum materials, Annu. Rev. Condens. Mater. Phys. 10, 387 (2019).
  5. Y. H. Wang, H. Steinberg, P. Jarillo-Herrero, and N. Gedik, Observation of Floquet-Bloch states on the surface of a topological insulator, Science 342, 453 (2013).
  6. F. Mahmood, C.-K. Chan, Z. Alpichshev, D. Gardner, Y. Lee, P. A. Lee, and N. Gedik, Selective scattering between Floquet-Bloch and Volkov states in a topological insulator, Nat. Phys. 12, 306 (2016).
  7. J. W. McIver, B. Schulte, F. U. Stein, T. Matsuyama, G. Jotzu, G. Meier, and A. Cavalleri, Light-induced anomalous hall effect in graphene, Nat. Phys. 16, 38 (2020).
  8. M. Bukov, M. Kolodrubetz, and A. Polkovnikov, Schrieffer-Wolff Transformation for Periodically Driven Systems: Strongly Correlated Systems with Artificial Gauge Fields, Phys. Rev. Lett. 116, 125301 (2016).
  9. J. H. Mentink, K. Balzer, and M. Eckstein, Ultrafast and reversible control of the exchange interaction in Mott insulators, Nat. Commun. 6, 6708 (2015).
  10. M. Claassen, H.-C. Jiang, B. Moritz, and T. P. Devereaux, Dynamical time-reversal symmetry breaking and photo-induced chiral spin liquids in frustrated Mott insulators, Nat. Commun. 8, 1192 (2017).
  11. J. Liu, K. Hejazi, and L. Balents, Floquet Engineering of Multiorbital Mott Insulators: Applications to Orthorhombic Titanates, Phys. Rev. Lett. 121, 107201 (2018).
  12. K. Hejazi, J. Liu, and L. Balents, Floquet spin and spin-orbital hamiltonians and doublon-holon generations in periodically driven mott insulators, Phys. Rev. B 99, 205111 (2019).
  13. S. Chaudhary, D. Hsieh, and G. Refael, Orbital floquet engineering of exchange interactions in magnetic materials, Phys. Rev. B 100, 220403(R) (2019).
  14. N. Arakawa and K. Yonemitsu, Floquet engineering of mott insulators with strong spin-orbit coupling, Phys. Rev. B 103, L100408 (2021).
  15. A. Ron, S. Chaudhary, G. Zhang, H. Ning, E. Zoghlin, S. D. Wilson, R. D. Averitt, G. Refael, and D. Hsieh, Ultrafast Enhancement of Ferromagnetic Spin Exchange Induced by Ligand-to-Metal Charge Transfer, Phys. Rev. Lett. 125, 197203 (2020).
  16. S. Chaudhary, A. Ron, D. Hsieh, and G. Refael, Controlling ligand-mediated exchange interactions in periodically driven magnetic materials, arXiv:2009.00813.
  17. G. Jackeli and G. Khaliullin, Mott Insulators in the Strong Spin-Orbit Coupling Limit: From Heisenberg to a Quantum Compass and Kitaev Models, Phys. Rev. Lett. 102, 017205 (2009).
  18. J. Chaloupka, G. Jackeli, and G. Khaliullin, Zigzag Magnetic Order in the Iridium Oxide Na2IrO3, Phys. Rev. Lett. 110, 097204 (2013).
  19. J. G. Rau, E. K.-H. Lee, and H.-Y. Kee, Generic Spin Model for the Honeycomb Iridates beyond the Kitaev Limit, Phys. Rev. Lett. 112, 077204 (2014).
  20. S. M. Winter, Y. Li, H. O. Jeschke, and R. Valentí, Challenges in design of Kitaev materials: Magnetic interactions from competing energy scales, Phys. Rev. B 93, 214431 (2016).
  21. S. M. Winter, A. A. Tsirlin, M. Daghofer, J. van den Brink, Y. Singh, P. Gegenwart, and R. Valentí, Models and materials for generalized Kitaev magnetism, J. Phys.: Condens. Matter 29, 493002 (2017).
  22. D. Gotfryd, J. Rusnačko, K. Wohlfeld, G. Jackeli, J. C. V. Chaloupka, and A. M. Oleś, Phase diagram and spin correlations of the Kitaev-Heisenberg model: Importance of quantum effects, Phys. Rev. B 95, 024426 (2017).
  23. J. A. Sears, M. Songvilay, K. W. Plumb, J. P. Clancy, Y. Qiu, Y. Zhao, D. Parshall, and Y.-J. Kim, Magnetic order in α−RuCl3: A honeycomb-lattice quantum magnet with strong spin-orbit coupling, Phys. Rev. B 91, 144420 (2015).
  24. For simplicity, we impose C3 symmetry on the hopping matrix elements, however a generalization to account for distortions of the C2/m space group is straightforward.
  25. E.g., a dimensionless field strength of A¯=0.25 at a frequency ℏΩ=2.5 eV corresponds to an electric field amplitude of E≈1.8×107 V · cm−1.
  26. See Supplemental Material at http://link.aps.org/supplemental/10.1103/PhysRevResearch.4.L032036 for a discussion of Floquet theory, further details of the non-equilibrium model, and photoinduced exchange coefficients for additional pump parameter regimes.
  27. Throughout this study the values of these constants used were adapted from recent ab initio and photoemission studies: U=3.0,JH=0.45,U′=U−2JH,λ=0.15,Δ=5,t1=0.03,t2=0.03,t3=−0.06,t4=−0.02 and tpd=−0.9 [34, 36].
  28. Y. Wang, M. Claassen, B. J. Moritz, and T. P. Devereaux, Producing coherent excitations in pumped mott antiferromagnetic insulators, Phys. Rev. B 96, 235142 (2017).
  29. S. M. Winter, K. Reidl, P. A. Maksimov, A. L. Chernyshev, A. Honecker, and R. Valentí, Breakdown of magnons in a strongly spin-orbital coupled magnet, Nat. Commun. 8, 1152 (2017).
  30. J. Gordon, A. Catuneanu, E. Sørensen, and H. Y. Kee, Theory of the field-revealed kitaev spin liquid, Nat. Commun. 10, 2470 (2019).
  31. D. Takikawa and S. Fujimoto, Impact of off-diagonal exchange interactions on the kitaev spin-liquid state of α−RuCl3, Phys. Rev. B 99, 224409 (2019).
  32. Y. Kawakami, H. Itoh, K. Yonemitsu, and S. Iwai, Strong light-field effects driven by nearly single-cycle 7 fs light-field in correlated organic conductors, J. Phys. B: At. Mol. Opt. Phys. 51, 174005 (2018).
  33. D. M. Kennes, A. de la Torre, A. Ron, D. Hsieh, and A. J. Millis, Floquet Engineering in Quantum Chains, Phys. Rev. Lett. 120, 127601 (2018).
  34. H.-S. Kim and H.-Y. Kee, Crystal structure and magnetism in α−RuCl3: An ab initio study, Phys. Rev. B 93, 155143 (2016).
  35. J. A. Sears, L. E. Chern, S. Kim, P. J. Bereciartua, S. Francoual, Y. B. Kim, and Y. J. Kim, Ferromagnetic Kitaev interaction and the origin of large magnetic anisotropy in α−RuCl3, Nat. Phys. 16, 837 (2020).
  36. S. Sinn, C. H. Kim, B. H. Kim, K. D. Lee, C. J. Won, J. S. Oh, M. Han, Y. J. Chang, N. Hur, H. Sato, B. Park, C. Kim, H. Kim, and T. W. Noh, Electronic structure of the Kitaev material α−RuCl3 probed by photoemission and inverse photoemission spectroscopies, Sci. Rep. 6, 39544 (2016).

Outline

Information

Phys. Rev. Research 4, L032036– Published 1 September, 2022
  • Received 14 August 2021
  • Revised 14 July 2022
  • Accepted 20 July 2022
Crossmark - Check for updates button
Creative Commons Logo

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.

Published by the American Physical Society

Sign In to Your Journals Account

Filter

Filter

Article Lookup

Enter a citation