Strong interband Faraday rotation in 3D topological insulator Bi2Se3.
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ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Ohnoutek L
PROVIDER: S-EPMC4707504 | biostudies-other | 2016
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-other
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Project description:Electrons with a linear energy/momentum dispersion are called massless Dirac electrons and represent the low-energy excitations in exotic materials such as graphene and topological insulators. Dirac electrons are characterized by notable properties such as a high mobility, a tunable density and, in topological insulators, a protection against backscattering through the spin-momentum locking mechanism. All those properties make graphene and topological insulators appealing for plasmonics applications. However, Dirac electrons are expected to present also a strong nonlinear optical behaviour. This should mirror in phenomena such as electromagnetic-induced transparency and harmonic generation. Here we demonstrate that in Bi2Se3 topological insulator, an electromagnetic-induced transparency is achieved under the application of a strong terahertz electric field. This effect, concomitantly determined by harmonic generation and charge-mobility reduction, is exclusively related to the presence of Dirac electron at the surface of Bi2Se3, and opens the road towards tunable terahertz nonlinear optical devices based on topological insulator materials.
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Project description:Band-alignment induced current modulation in Bi2Se3 three-dimensional topological insulator slab has been investigated by quantum transport simulations for three different device designs, one for purely lateral transport and other two with vertical transport. Non-Equilibrium Green Function formalism has been deployed to understand the transport mechanism in band-alignment devices to appraise the possibility of a 3D-TI based resonant device. A resonance condition is observed when the Dirac-points (bands) are aligned. This results in the maximum current at resonance for the design with only lateral transport. However, current ratio between resonant and non-resonant condition is found to be relatively small and strong temperature dependence is also noticed. The other two designs with vertical transport have degraded transfer characteristics, although from state-of-art literature they are expected to manifest nearly an ideal resonance peak. The physical insights for these observations have been posited along with the suggestions for attaining close to an ideal operation for the first design, which we also suggest for the pursuit in the future for spintronic oscillators and analog multipliers based on band-alignment induced resonance.
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