Regensburg 2022 – scientific programme
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TT: Fachverband Tiefe Temperaturen
TT 18: Topological Insulators
TT 18.2: Talk
Wednesday, September 7, 2022, 09:45–10:00, H23
Berry curvature effects in high-harmonic generation in topological insulator surface states — •Vanessa Junk1, Cosimo Gorini2, and Klaus Richter1 — 1Institut für Theoretische Physik, Universität Regensburg, Germany — 2Université Paris-Saclay, CEA, CNRS, SPEC, 91191, Gif-sur-Yvette, France
When strong-field light is interacting with a solid, it acts as an a.c. bias accelerating electrons through the bandstructure and driving non-perturbative transitions. These processes can lead to the emission of high-order harmonics containing fingerprints of the materials properties. Since in topological insulator surface states scattering is strongly suppressed, signatures of coherent transport can be found in the resulting spectra.
Recently, high-harmonics generation from the surface states of the three-dimensional topological insulator Bi2Te3 has been observed experimentally [1]. Here, we show fully quantum mechanical simulations of the electron dynamics and compare them with the experimental results. We find that the Berry curvature can not only lead to high-harmonics polarized perpendicularly to incoming radiation but also to an alternating polarization of odd and even order harmonics. This being one of the key observations in the experiment suggests the importance of Berry curvature effects in coherent high-harmonics emission.
[1] C. Schmid, L. Weigl, P. Grössing, V. Junk, C. Gorini, S. Schlauderer, S. Ito, M. Meierhofer, N. Hofmann, D. Afanasiev, J. Crewse, K. Kokh, O. Tereshchenko, J. Güdde, F. Evers, J. Wilhelm, K. Richter, U. Höfer, R. Huber, Nature 593, 385 (2021)