Spontaneous gyrotropic electronic order in a transition-metal dichalcogenide

Su-Yang Xu, Qiong Ma, Yang Gao, Anshul Kogar, Alfred Zong, Andrés M. Mier Valdivia, Thao H. Dinh, Shin-Ming Huang, Bahadur Singh, Chuang-Han Hsu, Tay-Rong Chang, Jacob P. C. Ruff, Kenji Watanabe, Takashi Taniguchi, Hsin Lin, Goran Karapetrov, Di Xiao, Pablo Jarillo-Herrero () and Nuh Gedik ()
Additional contact information
Su-Yang Xu: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Qiong Ma: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Yang Gao: Carnegie Mellon University
Anshul Kogar: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Alfred Zong: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Andrés M. Mier Valdivia: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Thao H. Dinh: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Shin-Ming Huang: National Sun Yat-sen University
Bahadur Singh: Shenzhen University
Chuang-Han Hsu: National University of Singapore
Tay-Rong Chang: National Cheng Kung University
Jacob P. C. Ruff: CHESS, Cornell University
Kenji Watanabe: National Institute for Materials Science
Takashi Taniguchi: National Institute for Materials Science
Hsin Lin: Academia Sinica
Goran Karapetrov: Drexel University
Di Xiao: Carnegie Mellon University
Pablo Jarillo-Herrero: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Nuh Gedik: Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Nature, 2020, vol. 578, issue 7796, 545-549

Abstract: Abstract Chirality is ubiquitous in nature, and populations of opposite chiralities are surprisingly asymmetric at fundamental levels1,2. Examples range from parity violation in the subatomic weak force to homochirality in biomolecules. The ability to achieve chirality-selective synthesis (chiral induction) is of great importance in stereochemistry, molecular biology and pharmacology2. In condensed matter physics, a crystalline electronic system is geometrically chiral when it lacks mirror planes, space-inversion centres or rotoinversion axes1. Typically, geometrical chirality is predefined by the chiral lattice structure of a material, which is fixed on formation of the crystal. By contrast, in materials with gyrotropic order3–6, electrons spontaneously organize themselves to exhibit macroscopic chirality in an originally achiral lattice. Although such order—which has been proposed as the quantum analogue of cholesteric liquid crystals—has attracted considerable interest3–15, no clear observation or manipulation of gyrotropic order has been achieved so far. Here we report the realization of optical chiral induction and the observation of a gyrotropically ordered phase in the transition-metal dichalcogenide semimetal 1T-TiSe2. We show that shining mid-infrared circularly polarized light on 1T-TiSe2 while cooling it below the critical temperature leads to the preferential formation of one chiral domain. The chirality of this state is confirmed by the measurement of an out-of-plane circular photogalvanic current, the direction of which depends on the optical induction. Although the role of domain walls requires further investigation with local probes, the methodology demonstrated here can be applied to realize and control chiral electronic phases in other quantum materials4,16.

Date: 2020
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DOI: 10.1038/s41586-020-2011-8

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