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Giant second harmonic generation from polar van der Waals Bismuth tellurohalide semiconductors

ORAL

Abstract

Rashba materials from the Bismuth tellurohalide family of polar layered van der Waals (vdW) semiconductors hold great promise for nonlinear optical (NLO) applications, since their broken spatial inversion symmetry leads to a large second-order nonlinear optical polarizability, χ(2). Here, we report the first second harmonic generation (SHG) studies of the bulk polar semiconductors BiTeBr and BiTeI. Our results reveal that BiTeBr, in particular, hosts a large SHG response, comparable to that of archetypal semiconductors and larger than other vdW materials. In contrast to BiTeBr, the response of BiTeI is substantially smaller, suggesting that their relative halide polarity plays a key role in the dramatically different nonlinear optical response. Furthermore, we compared our results to the nonlinear optical response of the Weyl semimetal TaAs, which has previously been shown to produce extremely large SHG, under identical conditions and observe that BiTeBr has nearly half the nonlinear conversion efficiency of TaAs, despite the absence of any known topological properties. This suggests that the BiTeX family of compounds, particularly the BiTeBr compound, are ideal candidates for NLO applications.

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Presenters

  • Prashant Padmanabhan

    Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies, Los Alamos National Laboratory

Authors

  • Prashant Padmanabhan

    Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies, Los Alamos National Laboratory

  • Samuel Gilinsky

    Department of Physics, Northern Arizona University

  • Kevin Kwock

    Columbia Univ

  • Nicholas Sirica

    Los Alamos National Laboratory, Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies, Los Alamos National Laboratory

  • Jaewook Kim

    Department of Physics, Rutgers University

  • Sang-Wook Cheong

    Rutgers University, R-CEM & Department of Physics and Astronomy, Rutgers University, Piscataway, New Jersey 08854, USA, Rutgers Center for Emergent Materials, Rutgers University, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Center for Emergent Materials, Rutgers University; Max Planck POSTECH/Korea Research Initiative, Pohang University of Science and Technol, Physics and Astronomy, Rutgers University, Rutgers University, Physics and Astronomy, and Laboratory for Pohang Emergent Materials and Max Plank POSTECH Center for Complex Phase Materials, Pohang University of Science, Rutgers Center for Emergent Materials and Department of Physics and Astronomy, Rutgers University, Piscataway, New Jersey 08854, USA, Rutgers University, Piscataway, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Rutgers University, Department of Physics, Rutgers University, Physics & Astronomy, Rutgers University, Rutgers Center for Emergent Materials and Department of Physics and Astronomy, Rutgers University, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, Physics, Rutgers University, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Rutgers University, Piscataway, New Jersey 08854, USA

  • Rohit P Prasankumar

    Los Alamos National Laboratory, Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies, Los Alamos National Laboratory