Floquet band engineering in van der Waals magnets

Periodic driving with light can in principle be used to alter the effective exchange interactions in magnetic materials in a bond selective manner, opening the way to dynamically stabilize magnetic orders that are difficult to access in thermal equilibrium. However, owing to the large electric field amplitudes necessary, it is challenging to overcome runaway heating effects. One approach to potentially mitigate absorption-induced heating is to drive insulating systems at photon energies inside transparency windows below the bandgap. In this talk, I will report on recent progress we have made using this approach to coherently engineer the band structure of 2D van der Waals magnets, and how these effects can be leveraged to control their structural dynamics.