Enantiomerically Specific Nonlinear Optical Responses in Chiral Weyl Semimetals

Weyl semimetals that break all structural mirror symmetries may comprise Weyl nodes of opposite Chern number that are offset in energy, making these systems ideal for studying the optical properties of an individual Weyl node without interference from its opposite sign partner. Since these materials are acentric, they can also host helicity dependent, second order nonlinear optical responses from both bulk [1, 2] and surface states [3]. In this talk, we will describe the effect of structural handedness on shift current, injection current and second harmonic generation in the structurally chiral Weyl semimetal PdGa over the 0.475 – 1.5 eV photon energy range and discuss the effect of topological order on the material response.

[1] D. Rees, K. Manna, B. Lu, T. Morimoto, H. Borrmann, C. Felser, J. E. Moore, D. H. Torchinsky, and J. Orenstein, Sci. Adv. 6, 0509 (2020). eaba

[2] Z. Ni, B. Xu, M.-Á. Sánchez-Martínez, Y. Zhang, K. Manna, C. Bernhard, J. W. F. Venderbos, F. de Juan, C. Felser, A. G. Grushin, and L. Wu, Npj Quantum Mater. 5, 96 (2020)

[3] D. Rees, B. Lu, Y. Sun, K. Manna, R. Özgür, S. Subedi, H. Borrmann, C. Felser, J. Orenstein, and D. H. Torchinsky Phys. Rev. Lett. 127, 157405 (2021)