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Plasmon Worldlines Reveal Quantum Geometrical Breakdown of Galilean Invariance in Graphene Bilayer

ORAL

Abstract

Galilean invariance asserts that physical laws remain unchanged under coordinate transformations that include both space and time translations. Plasmons, the quanta of charge density oscillations, are generally analyzed within a Galilean-invariant framework. In this work, we investigated plasmon wave packets residing in parabolic bands of Bernal bilayer graphene, a system that theoretically should exhibit Galilean invariance. However, the pseudospin texture, arising from the quantum geometry of the electronic wave function, disrupts Galilean invariance at the length scales of plasmon wavelengths and timescales of inverse plasmon frequency. By employing nano-terahertz spacetime metrology, we directly visualized plasmon worldlines in spacetime coordinates. Our experiments revealed a pronounced enhancement of the Drude weight as the carrier density approached the charge neutrality point. This renormalization of the plasmon dispersion deviates from classical plasmonic theory, resulting from the interplay between many-body correlations and the nontrivial quantum geometry of chiral fermions in Bernal bilayer graphene. These findings provide new insights into the influence of spacetime symmetry, electronic correlations, and quantum geometry on the macroscopic plasmonic response of quantum many-body systems.

Presenters

  • Suheng Xu

    Columbia University

Authors

  • Suheng Xu

    Columbia University

  • Birui Yang

    Columbia University

  • Nishchhal Verma

    Columbia University

  • Rocco A Vitalone

    Columbia University

  • Miguel Sánchez Sánchez

    Instituto de Ciencia de Materiales de Madrid (ICMM)

  • Julian P Ingham

    Boston University

  • Ran Jing

    Brookhaven National Laboratory, Columbia University

  • Yinming Shao

    Pennsylvania State University, Columbia University, Pennsylvania State University

  • Tobias Stauber

    Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas (CSIC)

  • Angel Rubio

    Max Planck Institute for the Structure & Dynamics of Matter, Max Planck Institute for the Structure & Dynamics of Matter; Flatiron Institute's Center for Computational Quantum Physics (CCQ) & Initiative for Computational Catalysis (ICC)

  • Milan Delor

    Columbia University, Columbia university

  • Mengkun Liu

    Stony Brook University (SUNY)

  • Michael M Fogler

    University of California, San Diego

  • Cory R Dean

    Columbia University

  • Andrew J Millis

    Columbia University

  • Raquel Queiroz

    Columbia University

  • Dmitri N Basov

    Columbia University