Controlling symmetry and topology via bicircular light: application to Cd₃As₂

Light-matter interaction is a powerful tool to manipulate electronic properties of materials. Of particular interest are intense periodic light fields, which can be carefully tailored to dynamically manipulate materials’ properties via control of symmetry and band topology. A particularly versatile and less explored way of such Floquet engineering is to use a bicircular light, which is a superposition of two circularly polarized lights of different frequencies that are integer multiples of each other. In bicircular light, the electric field traces out a Lissajous figure in real space, which opens the intriguing possibility to precisely control spatial and magnetic symmetries, in addition to time-reversal symmetry. We apply bicircular light tuning to the Dirac semimetal Cd₃As₂ and demonstrate that the material can be driven into different Weyl semimetal phases, with interesting consequences on the protected surface states.