@article{24606e6229044d7884b36401aa45c64e,
title = "Axion optical induction of antiferromagnetic order",
abstract = "Using circularly polarized light to control quantum matter is a highly intriguing topic in physics, chemistry and biology. Previous studies have demonstrated helicity-dependent optical control of chirality and magnetization, with important implications in asymmetric synthesis in chemistry; homochirality in biomolecules; and ferromagnetic spintronics. We report the surprising observation of helicity-dependent optical control of fully compensated antiferromagnetic order in two-dimensional even-layered MnBi2Te4, a topological axion insulator with neither chirality nor magnetization. To understand this control, we study an antiferromagnetic circular dichroism, which appears only in reflection but is absent in transmission. We show that the optical control and circular dichroism both arise from the optical axion electrodynamics. Our axion induction provides the possibility to optically control a family of PT-symmetric antiferromagnets (P, inversion; T, time-reversal) such as Cr2O3, even-layered CrI3 and possibly the pseudo-gap state in cuprates. In MnBi2Te4, this further opens the door for optical writing of a dissipationless circuit formed by topological edge states.",
author = "Qiu, {Jian Xiang} and Christian Tzschaschel and Junyeong Ahn and Anyuan Gao and Houchen Li and Zhang, {Xin Yue} and Barun Ghosh and Chaowei Hu and Wang, {Yu Xuan} and Liu, {Yu Fei} and Damien B{\'e}rub{\'e} and Thao Dinh and Zhenhao Gong and Lien, {Shang Wei} and Ho, {Sheng Chin} and Bahadur Singh and Kenji Watanabe and Takashi Taniguchi and Bell, {David C.} and Lu, {Hai Zhou} and Arun Bansil and Hsin Lin and Chang, {Tay Rong} and Zhou, {Brian B.} and Qiong Ma and Ashvin Vishwanath and Ni Ni and Xu, {Su Yang}",
note = "Funding Information: We gratefully thank X. Xu and T. Song for sharing their experience on CD set-up and M. Fiebig for providing the CrO bulk crystals. We also thank Y. Gao, B. I. Halperin, P. Hosur and P. Kim for helpful discussions. Work in the S.-Y.X. group was supported through National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER grant no. DMR-2143177 (Harvard fund 129522). S.-Y.X. acknowledges the Corning Fund for Faculty Development. S.-Y.X., J.A., Q.M. and A.V. acknowledge support from the Center for the Advancement of Topological Semimetals, an Energy Frontier Research Center funded by the US Department of Energy, Office of Science through the Ames Laboratory under contract DE-AC0207CH11358. The sample fabrication in the QM group was supported by the NSF Career DMR-2143426 and the (CIFAR) Azrieli Global Scholars program.C.T. acknowledges support from the Swiss National Science Foundation under project P2EZP2_191801. Y.-F.L., S.-Y.X. and D.C.B. were supported by the Science and Technology Center for Integrated Quantum Materials, NSF grant no. DMR-1231319. This work was performed in part at the Center for Nanoscale Systems at Harvard University, a member of the National Nanotechnology Coordinated Infrastructure Network, which is supported by the NSF under award no. 1541959. Work at University of California, Los Angeles was supported by the US Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences under award no. DE-SC0021117. The work at Tata Institute of Fundamental Research Mumbai is supported by the Department of Atomic Energy of the government of India under project no. 12-R&D-TFR-5.10-0100. The work at Northeastern University was supported by the US Air Force Office of Scientific Research under award no. FA9550-20-1-0322, and it benefited from the computational resources of Northeastern University{\textquoteright}s Advanced Scientific Computation Center and the Discovery Cluster. H.L. acknowledges the support by the National Science and Technology Council in Taiwan under grant no. MOST 111-2112-M-001-057-MY3. T.-R.C. was supported by the 2030 Cross-Generation Young Scholars Program from the National Science and Technology Council in Taiwan (programme no. MOST 111-2628-M-006-003-MY3); National Cheng Kung University, Taiwan; and National Center for Theoretical Sciences, Taiwan. This research was supported, in part, by the Higher Education Sprout Project, Ministry of Education to the Headquarters of University Advancement at National Cheng Kung University. H.-Z.L. was supported by the National Key R&D Program of China (2022YFA1403700), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (11925402), Guangdong province (2016ZT06D348, 2020KCXTD001), the Science, Technology and Innovation Commission of Shenzhen Municipality (ZDSYS20170303165926217, JCYJ20170412152620376, KYTDPT20181011104202253) and the Center for Computational Science and Engineering of SUSTech. K.W. and T.T. acknowledge support from Japan Society for the Promotion of Science KAKENHI (grant nos 19H05790, 20H00354 and 21H05233). X.-Y.Z., Y.-X.W. and B.B.Z. acknowledge support from NSF award no. ECCS-2041779. 2 3 Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Limited.",
year = "2023",
month = may,
doi = "10.1038/s41563-023-01493-5",
language = "English",
volume = "22",
pages = "583--590",
journal = "Nature Materials",
issn = "1476-1122",
publisher = "Nature Publishing Group",
number = "5",
}