Condensed Matter Seminar

January 23 2020

G126 noon

 

Justin Song

NTU Singapore

 

Spontaneous Berry flux generation and collective mode magnetism

Abstract

Spontaneous symmetry breaking lies at the heart of the description of interacting phases of matter. Here we argue that a driven interacting system subject to a linearly polarized (achiral) driving field can spontaneously magnetize (acquire chirality). In particular, we find when a metal is driven close to its plasmon resonance, it hosts strong internal ac fields that enable Berryogenesis: the spontaneous generation of a self-induced Bloch band Berry flux, which supports and is sustained by a circulating plasmonic motion, even for a linear polarized driving field. This non-equilibrium phase transition occurs above a critical driving amplitude, and depending on system parameters, can enter the spontaneously magnetized state in either a discontinuous or continuous fashion. Berryogenesis relies on nontrivial interband coherences for electronic states near the Fermi energy generated by ac fields readily found in a wide variety of multiband systems. We anticipate that graphene devices, in particular, which can host high quality plasmons, provide a natural and easily available platform to achieve Berryogenesis and spontaneous non-equilibrium (plasmon-mediated) magnetization in present-day devices, e.g., those based on graphene plasmonics. If we have time, we will also discuss other manifestations of non-trivial quantum geometry in Dirac systems.