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Nonlinear photoresponse of type-II Weyl semimetals

Nature Materials volume 18, pages 476–481 (2019)Cite this article

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Abstract

The experimental manifestation of topological effects in bulk materials is attracting enormous research interest. However, direct experimental evidence of the effective k-space monopole of the Weyl nodes has so far been lacking. Here, signatures of the singular topology of the type-II Weyl semimetal TaIrTe4 are revealed in the photoresponses, which are related to divergence of the Berry curvature. TaIrTe4 exhibits a large photoresponsivity of 130.2 mA W−1—with 4 μm excitation in an unbiased field-effect transistor at room temperature—arising from the third-order nonlinear optical response, approaching the performance of commercial low-temperature detectors. In addition, the circularly polarized galvanic response is enhanced at 4 μm, possibly due to the same Berry curvature singularity enhancement. Considering the optical selection rule of chiral Weyl cones, this may open the door for studying and controlling the chiral polarization of Weyl fermions with an electric field in addition to the optical helicities.

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Fig. 1: Type-II WSM TaIrTe4 and scanning photocurrent response.
Fig. 2: Giant and anisotropic shift current response.
Fig. 3: Numerical simulation of the shift current response.
Fig. 4: Circular photogalvanic response.

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Data availability

The data that support the plots within this paper and other findings of this study are available from the corresponding authors upon reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge helpful discussions with J. Sipe, R. Muniz and Q. Ma. This project was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC grants nos. 91750109, 11725415, 11674013, 11774010, 11704012 and 11374021), the National Basic Research Program of China (973 grant no. 2014CB920900), the National Key Research and Development Program of China (grants nos. 2018YFA0305601, 2018YFA0305604 and 2016YFA0301004), the Recruitment Program of Global Experts and the State Key Laboratory of Precision Measurement Technology and Instruments Fund for open topics. Z.L. and P.Y. acknowledge support from the Singapore National Research Foundation under NRF award number NRF-RF2013-08, MOE Tier 2 MOE2016-T2-2-153 and MOE2017-T2-2-136. J.F. acknowledges support from the Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (grant no. XDB28000000). The computations are supported by the High-performance Computing Platform of Peking University and the Tianhe-1 National Supercomputing Center in Tianjin.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. International Center for Quantum Materials, School of Physics, Peking University, Beijing, China

    Junchao Ma, Qiangqiang Gu, Yinan Liu, Jiawei Lai, Xiao Zhuo, Jian-Hao Chen, Ji Feng & Dong Sun

  2. School of Materials Science and Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, Singapore

    Peng Yu & Zheng Liu

  3. Collaborative Innovation Center of Quantum Matter, Beijing, China

    Jian-Hao Chen, Ji Feng & Dong Sun

  4. CAS Center for Excellence in Topological Quantum Computation, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

    Ji Feng

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  1. Junchao Ma
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Contributions

D.S. conceived the idea and designed the experiments. Y.P. synthesized the bulk TaIrTe4 materials under the supervision of Z.L. Y.L. fabricated the TaIrTe4 devices under the supervision of J.-H.C. J.M., J.L. and X.Z. performed the optical measurements under the supervision of D.S. Q.G. performed the band calculations under the supervision of J.F. J.M., Q.G., J.F. and D.S. analysed the results. D.S. wrote the manuscript, assisted by J.M., Q.G., J.-H.C. and J.F. All authors commented on the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Jian-Hao Chen, Ji Feng or Dong Sun.

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Supplementary Figures 1–19, Supplementary Notes 1–18, Supplementary References 1–16

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Ma, J., Gu, Q., Liu, Y. et al. Nonlinear photoresponse of type-II Weyl semimetals. Nat. Mater. 18, 476–481 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41563-019-0296-5

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