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Chiral Light Amplifier with Pumped Weyl Semimetals.
1Department of Physics, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Ookayama, Meguro, Tokyo 152-8551, Japan.
Physical Review Letters
|March 17, 2023
Summary
Pumped Weyl semimetals exhibit anomalous reflectance due to chiral magnetic instability. This phenomenon, driven by parallel fields, leads to reflectance exceeding unity for specific light conditions.
Area of Science:
- Condensed matter physics
- Quantum materials
Background:
- Weyl semimetals possess unique electronic properties governed by the axial anomaly.
- Nonequilibrium states in these materials can host exotic phenomena like the chiral magnetic effect.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the electromagnetic response of pumped Weyl semimetals.
- To explore the manifestation of chiral magnetic instability as anomalous surface reflectance.
Main Methods:
- Theoretical analysis of parallel electric and magnetic fields applied to Weyl semimetals.
- Coupling Maxwell's equations with transport phenomena (chiral magnetic and anomalous Hall effects).
Main Results:
- Chiral magnetic instability arises in the nonequilibrium steady state.
- Anomalous reflectance, exceeding unity, is predicted for circularly polarized light.
- Reflectance depends on electric, chiral magnetic, and anomalous Hall conductivities.
Conclusions:
- Chiral magnetic instability in Weyl semimetals leads to observable anomalous reflectance.
- The effect is sensitive to material conductivities and incident light polarization.
- This provides a potential method for probing Weyl semimetal surface states.
