Optical N-invariant of graphene’s topological viscous Hall fluid

Todd Van Mechelen, Wenbo Sun and Zubin Jacob ()
Additional contact information
Todd Van Mechelen: Purdue University
Wenbo Sun: Purdue University
Zubin Jacob: Purdue University

Nature Communications, 2021, vol. 12, issue 1, 1-9

Abstract: Abstract Over the past three decades, graphene has become the prototypical platform for discovering topological phases of matter. Both the Chern $$C\in {\mathbb{Z}}$$ C ∈ Z and quantum spin Hall $$\upsilon \in {{\mathbb{Z}}}_{2}$$ υ ∈ Z 2 insulators were first predicted in graphene, which led to a veritable explosion of research in topological materials. We introduce a new topological classification of two-dimensional matter – the optical N-phases $$N\in {\mathbb{Z}}$$ N ∈ Z . This topological quantum number is connected to polarization transport and captured solely by the spatiotemporal dispersion of the susceptibility tensor χ. We verify N ≠ 0 in graphene with the underlying physical mechanism being repulsive Hall viscosity. An experimental probe, evanescent magneto-optic Kerr effect (e-MOKE) spectroscopy, is proposed to explore the N-invariant. We also develop topological circulators by exploiting gapless edge plasmons that are immune to back-scattering and navigate sharp defects with impunity. Our work indicates that graphene with repulsive Hall viscosity is the first candidate material for a topological electromagnetic phase of matter.

Date: 2021
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-25097-2 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:12:y:2021:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-021-25097-2

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-021-25097-2

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().