arXiv subjects

Hao Chu

Publications and source records attributed to Hao Chu.

9 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Non-Resonant Impulsively Stimulated Raman Scattering by a Terahertz Field: a Case Study of 1T-TaS2

Time-domain ultrafast and nonlinear terahertz spectroscopy techniques are recently applied to many condensed matter systems for investigating their collective excitations. In centrosymmetric systems, these collective modes are typically Raman-active and therefore do not couple directly to the terahertz electric field. The mechanism by which light-matter interaction realizes in these studies has not been explicitly discussed in detail. In this work, we perform terahertz pump - optical probe and terahertz third harmonic generation investigations on 1T-TaS2, a material exhibiting a rich charge-density-wave (CDW) phase diagram including the commensurate, nearly-commensurate and incommensurate CDW phases. The transition between these distinct states leaves a clear signature on the dynamical Raman response. We investigate how the Raman-active phonons couple to a broadband monocycle terahertz field as well as a narrowband multicycle terahertz field. Our results indicate that a modified impulsively stimulated Raman scattering mechanism involving two-photon absorption, also known as non-resonant Raman scattering, underlies the coherent excitation and observation of the lattice modes. These results are relevant for future spectroscopy investigation and coherent control of collective modes using low-energy terahertz field as well as cavity electrodynamical dressing of solids.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2026

Giant Surface-driven Nonlinear Hall Effect in BiTeCl at Room Temperature

The nonlinear Hall effect (NLHE) provides a pathway to generate a Hall response in time-reversal-symmetric yet inversion-symmetry-broken systems. NLHE can rectify an alternating current into a transverse direct voltage, making it attractive for radio-frequency rectification, energy harvesting, and terahertz detection, applications for which device miniaturization remains a central pursuit. In this context, the inherent inversion symmetry breaking at surfaces is particularly appealing: because symmetry is necessarily broken at the surface of any crystal, irrespective of whether its bulk is centrosymmetric, surface-driven nonlinear responses lift the stringent constraint on bulk symmetry and open a route toward compact device architectures. Here we report the observation of a giant, surface-driven second-order nonlinear Hall effect in the Rashba-type polar semiconductor BiTeCl at room temperature. The determined second-order nonlinear Hall susceptibility at 300 K reaches 1.68 $\mu$mV$^{-1}$, which is 80 times larger than that of the best previously reported surface-dominated systems. We attribute this giant response to the synergistic interplay between BiTeCl's polar crystal structure and its rich surface states: the polar stacking renders the top and bottom surfaces inequivalent, so that the nonlinear response originates from a single surface without compensation from the other. Symmetry and scaling analyses suggest that both skew-scattering and side-jump mechanisms contribute to the observed effect. Our findings not only identify BiTeCl as a promising platform for future applications utilizing the NLHE, but also establish the asymmetry between the opposite surfaces of a polar crystal as a general design principle for discovering surface-driven materials with larger nonlinear Hall responses.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2025

Higgs physics in superconductors

As pointed out by Nambu&Goldstone, continuous symmetry breaking gives rise to gapless bosonic excitation. In superconductors, continuous local U(1) gauge symmetry is broken. The gapless excitation thus created is the collective phase mode of a superconductor. In 1962, Anderson pointed out that Coulomb interaction lifts this gapless mode to the superconducting plasma frequency. Therefore, in a superconducting fluid there are no bosonic excitations below the Cooper pair binding energy. Anderson mechanism also implies that the massless photon becomes massive in a superconductor. It provides a microscopic theory for dissipationless charge transport (with Landau criterion for superfluidity) and the Meissner effect in a superconductor. Jumping to particle physics, to explain why the gauge bosons for electroweak interaction are massive, Higgs, Englert, Kibble et al. proposed the existence of the Higgs field. This matter field couples to the massless W, Z bosons and generates mass via the Higgs mechanism. Due to their conceptual similarities, these two mechanisms are referred to as the Anderson-Higgs mechanism. In 2013, the detection of the Higgs boson provided the final proof for the Higgs hypothesis decades after its conception. The amplitude mode of a superconductor, which corresponds to the Higgs boson in the above analogy, is referred to as the Higgs mode. Its spectroscopic detection has also remained elusive for decades. In recent years, the development of ultrafast techniques enabled an effective approach for studying the mode. Here, we introduce the Higgs mode from a perspective of why superconductors superconduct and review the recent development in Higgs spectroscopy, particularly in the field of nonlinear terahertz spectroscopy. We discuss the novel insights that may be learnt from these studies for future high-Tc superconductivity and correlated materials research in general.

cond-mat.supr-con↗

arXiv2025

Dissecting coupled orders in a terahertz-driven electron-doped cuprate

The interplay between superconductivity and charge density wave has often been studied from an equilibrium point of view. For example, using static tuning knobs such as doping, magnetic field and pressure, superconductivity can be enhanced or suppressed. The resulting effect on the co-existing charge density wave order, if any, is judged by variations in its ground state properties such as the ordering temperature or the spatial correlation. Such an approach can be understood as coordinated static displacements of two coupled order parameters within a Ginzburg-Landau description, evincing their interplay as either co-operative or competing but does not provide further microscopic information about the interaction. In order to assess such information, we dynamically perturb both orders from equilibrium and observe their coupling directly in the time-domain. We show that high-field multicycle terahertz pulses drive both the Higgs amplitude fluctuations of the superconducting order as well as collective fluctuations of the charge order in an electron-doped cuprate, resulting in characteristic third harmonic generation. A notable time delay is manifested between their respective driven dynamics. We propose that this may signify the important energy scale describing their coupling or imply a terahertz field-depinned charge density wave that destroys macroscopic superconductivity. Our work demonstrates a holistic approach for investigating coupled superconducting and charge density wave orders, which may shed novel light on their intertwined presence and widespread fluctuations in many classes of unconventional superconductors.

cond-mat.supr-con↗

arXiv2022

Dynamical interplay between superconductivity and charge-density-wave: a nonlinear terahertz study of coherently-driven 2H-NbSe2 and La2-xSrxCuO4

2H-NbSe2 is an archetypal system in which superconductivity and charge-density-wave (CDW) coexist and compete macroscopically with each other. In particular, this interplay also manifests in their dynamical fluctuations. As a result, the superconducting amplitude fluctuations (i.e. Higgs mode) is pushed below the quasiparticle continuum, allowing it to become a coherent excitation observable by Raman scattering. In the present study, we coherently drive the collective oscillations of the two orders and visualize their interplay in the driven states in the time domain. We find that both collective modes contribute to terahertz third harmonic generation (THG) and the THG signals interfere below Tc, leading to an anti-resonance of the integrated THG signal. The dynamical Ginzburg-Landau model suggests that around the anti-resonance a periodic energy transfer between the driven Higgs oscillations and the driven CDW oscillations is possible. In addition to 2H-NbSe2, we also studied an underdoped La2-xSrxCuO4 (x ~ 0.12) driven beyond the perturbative regime of THG. A similar interference between two sources of THG is observed below Tc. While there might be additional sources of THG in these experiments, our results illustrate the roles of coupled modes in the terahertz THG process and the tantalizing possibility of coherent control via such couplings.

cond-mat.supr-con↗

arXiv2021

Unveiling the underlying interactions in Ta2NiSe5 from photo-induced lifetime change

We present a generic procedure for quantifying the interplay of electronic and lattice degrees of freedom in photo-doped insulators through a comparative analysis of theoretical many-body simulations and time- and angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (TR-ARPES) of the transient response of the candidate excitonic insulator Ta2NiSe5. Our analysis demonstrates that the electron-electron interactions dominate the electron-phonon ones. In particular, a detailed analysis of the TRARPES spectrum enables a clear separation of the dominant broadening (electronic lifetime) effects from the much smaller bandgap renormalization. Theoretical calculations show that the observed strong spectral broadening arises from the electronic scattering of the photo-excited particle-hole pairs and cannot be accounted for in a model in which electron-phonon interactions are dominant. We demonstrate that the magnitude of the weaker subdominant bandgap renormalization sensitively depends on the distance from the semiconductor/semimetal transition in the high-temperature state, which could explain apparent contradictions between various TR-ARPES experiments. The analysis presented here indicates that electron-electron interactions play a vital role (although not necessarily the sole one) in stabilizing the insulating state.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2021

Fano interference of the Higgs mode in cuprate high-Tc superconductors

Despite decades of search for the pairing boson in cuprate high-Tc superconductors, its identity still remains debated to date. For this reason, spectroscopic signatures of electron-boson interactions in cuprates have always been a center of attention. For example, the kinks in the quasiparticle dispersion observed by angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) studies have motivated a decade-long investigation of electron-phonon as well as electron-paramagnon interactions in cuprates. On the other hand, the overlap between the charge-order correlations and the pseudogap in the cuprate phase diagram has also generated discussions about the potential link between them. In the present study, we provide a fresh perspective on these intertwined interactions using the novel approach of Higgs spectroscopy, i.e. an investigation of the amplitude oscillations of the superconducting order parameter driven by a terahertz radiation. Uniquely for cuprates, we observe a Fano interference of its dynamically driven Higgs mode with another collective mode, which we reveal to be charge density wave fluctuations from an extensive doping- and magnetic field-dependent study. This finding is further corroborated by a mean field model in which we describe the microscopic mechanism underlying the interaction between the two orders. Our work demonstrates Higgs spectroscopy as a novel and powerful technique for investigating intertwined orders and microscopic processes in unconventional superconductors.

cond-mat.supr-con↗

arXiv2020

Manipulability of the Kondo effect in a T-shaped triple-quantum-dot structure

We theoretically investigate the Kondo effect of a T-shaped triple-quantum-dot structure, by means of the numerical renormalization group method. It is found that at the point of electron-hole symmetry, the system's entropy has opportunities to exhibit three kinds of transition processes for different interdot couplings, with the decrease of temperature. This leads to the different pictures of the Kondo physics, including the three-stage Kondo effect. Next when the electron-hole symmetry is broken or the structural parameters are changed, the Kondo resonance can also be observed in the conductance spectrum. However, it shows alternative dependence on the relevant quantities, i.e., the Coulomb interaction and interdot couplings. All these phenomena exhibit the abundant and interesting Kondo physics in this system. We believe that this work can be helpful for further understanding the Kondo effect in the triple-quantum-dot structures.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2020

Phase-resolved Higgs response in superconducting cuprates

In high energy physics, the Higgs field couples to gauge bosons and fermions and gives mass to their elementary excitations. Experimentally, such couplings can be inferred from the decay product of the Higgs boson, i.e. the scalar (amplitude) excitation of the Higgs field. In superconductors, Cooper pairs bear a close analogy to the Higgs field. Interaction between the Cooper pairs and other degrees of freedom provides dissipation channel for the amplitude mode, which may reveal important information about the microscopic pairing mechanism. To this end, we investigate the Higgs (amplitude) mode of several cuprate thin films using phase-resolved terahertz third harmonic generation (THG). In addition to the heavily damped Higgs mode itself, we observe a universal jump in the phase of the driven Higgs oscillation as well as a non-vanishing THG above Tc. These findings indicate coupling of the Higgs mode to other collective modes and potentially a nonzero pairing amplitude above Tc.

cond-mat.supr-con↗