arXiv subjects

Swati Chaudhary

Publications and source records attributed to Swati Chaudhary.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Extrinsic quantum geometry in the quadrupolar bulk photovoltaic effect

The bulk photovoltaic effect has become a valuable probe of the quantum geometry of Bloch bands. While it is restricted to inversion-broken systems within the dipole approximation, the finite momentum of light is appreciated to give rise to this effect even in centrosymmetric crystals, an effect referred to as "photon drag." In this work, we recast the photon drag effect at leading order in the optical wavevector, highlighting a previously neglected contribution arising intuitively from the electric quadrupole correction to light-matter coupling. In the language of band geometry, we identify this interband quadrupole as a multiband metric tensor that quantifies the variation of two resonantly driven states extrinsic to the subspace they span. We predict that systems in which three or more bands strongly admix in momentum space, such as twisted MoTe$_2$ bilayers, will have anomalously large photon drag due to this quadrupolar effect. Our work provides a conceptual bridge between band-geometric organizing principles and electromagnetic multipole corrections in nonlinear optics.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2026

OAM-mode sorting with a wavefront twister

We propose an OAM sorter based on a novel optical element that we refer to as a wavefront twister. It is a generalization of the conventional wavefront rotators such as the Dove prism. However, unlike a Dove prism, which simply rotates a wavefront, the rotation generated by a wavefront twister varies linearly with radial position, resulting in the twisting of the wavefront. We demonstrate that the wavefront twister, followed by a lens, maps each OAM mode to an annulus of distinct radius at the back focal plane of the lens with negligible inter-modal overlap and preserves the circular symmetry. Thus, the proposed wavefront twister offers a scalable scheme for high-dimensional OAM mode sorting, with important consequences for the practical realization of OAM-based applications.

physics.optics↗

arXiv2025

Nonreciprocal Transport with Quantum Geometric Origin in Layered Hybrid Perovskite

Quantum geometry quantifies how the electron wavefunction evolves distinctly from conventional transport theory. In noncentrosymmetric materials, nonreciprocal transport with quantum geometric origin remains prominent with localized charge independent of vanished group velocity. The discovery of such nonreciprocal and nonlinear responses was realized by recent advances in two-dimensional materials. As a promising candidate, the electronic structure and symmetry of layered hybrid perovskites can be deliberately designed and manipulated by incorporating selected organic ligands. Despite the observation of exotic photogalvanic effects and chiral optical effects, the underlying mechanism how these nonlinear responses are enabled in the multi-quantum well structures remained unclear. Here we demonstrated the quantum geometric origin for interlayer spontaneous photocurrent in (PEA)2PbI4. Contrary to assumptions that charge transport across the 2D planes is limited, we observed a spontaneous photocurrent along this crystalline orientation. Theoretical analysis using a tight-binding model identifies shift current as the microscopic origin. This quantum geometric effect is enabled by ionic displacements from centrosymmetric coordinates and enhanced by multiband transition high-density bands of the layered hybrid crystal. We anticipate that such unique low-dimensional systems with structure can provide fertile ground for discovering novel optoelectronic functionalities.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2025

Light-induced pseudo-magnetic fields in three-dimensional topological semimetals

In this work, we show that suitably designed spatially varying linearly polarized light provides a versatile route to generate and control pseudo-magnetic fields in Weyl semimetals through Floquet engineering. Within a high-frequency expansion, we derive an effective axial gauge potential $\mathbf{A}_5(\mathbf{r})$ whose curl gives the pseudo-magnetic field $\mathbf{B}_5(\mathbf{r})$. By mapping the light profile to $\mathbf{A}_5(\mathbf{r})$, we establish design principles for pseudo-magnetic field textures that mimic strain-induced gauge fields while offering key advantages like dynamic control, full reversibility, spatial selectivity, and absence of material deformation. We compare the Landau-level spectra produced by uniform real and pseudo-magnetic fields and also analyze both their linear optical conductivity and the second-order dc responses. Our results enable real-time manipulation of pseudo-magnetic fields and predict clear experimental signatures for optically engineered gauge fields in topological semimetals.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2025

Giant Shift Current in Electrically-Tunable Superlattice Bilayer Graphene

Recent introduction of superlattice potentials has opened new avenues for engineering tunable electronic band structures featuring topologically nontrivial moiré-like bands. Here we consider optoelectronic properties of Bernal-stacked graphene subjected to a superlattice potential either electrostatically or through lattice twisting to show that it exhibits a giant shift current response that is orders of magnitude larger than existing predictions in twisted mulitlayer systems. Effects of gate voltage and the strength and phase of the superlattice potential on the shift current are delineated systematically across various topological regimes. Our study gives insight into the nature of nonlinear responses of materials and how these responses could be optimized by tuning the superlattice potential.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2025

Chern-Simons type cross-correlations and geometric Born effective charge of phonons

The interplay between different degrees of freedom in condensed matter systems engenders a rich variety of emergent phenomena. In particular, fermions with non-trivial quantum geometry can generate Chern-Simons (CS)-like terms in effective field theories for different gauge fields. For phonons, such terms can result in chiral phonon splitting. Here, we propose that the local Berry curvature can influence the spectra and dynamics of optical phonons, even in materials with zero Chern number, which we demonstrate with a gapped Dirac model. We identify a previously overlooked CS like cross-correlation between electromagnetic and pseudo-gauge fields in 2+1 dimensions which depends on valley Chern number. It facilitates a direct coupling between phonons and photons by inducing a geometric Born effective charge. This opens up a new route for coherent Raman phonon excitation and quantum geometry probes.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2025

Pseudo-chiral phonon splitting from octupolar magnetic order

Motivated by the recent discovery of anomalously large magnetic response of chiral phonons in dipolar magnets, we explore an extension to study Einstein quantum phonon modes coupled to multipolar moments. We consider the case of non-Kramers $\Gamma_3$ doublets which encapsulate quadrupolar and Ising octupolar degrees of freedom, and which feature a symmetry-allowed linear coupling between local quadrupolar moments and Raman active $E_g$ phonon modes $(d_{x^2-y^2},d_{3z^2-r^2})$. We show that either octupolar or quadrupolar ordering leads to degeneracy breaking of the $E_g$ phonon doublet, with ferro-octupolar order favoring pseudo-chiral phonon eigenmodes with a detectable energy splitting. We describe this physics using a path integral approach in the limit where `fast' phonon modes sense the `slow' pseudospins as a static background which we average over using Monte Carlo simulations. We discuss implications for materials such as Ba$_2$CaOsO$_6$ and PrV$_2$Al$_{20}$ where Raman spectroscopy of phonons could be used as a potential probe of hidden octupolar order. Our work extends the important concept of chiral phonons to a large class of multipolar magnets.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2025

Anomalous phonon magnetic moments

Circularly polarized phonons conventionally carry an angular momentum and a magnetic moment arising from circular motions of the atoms. Here, we present three anomalous cases that lead to phonon magnetic moments, which cannot be described in the conventional framework: rotationless axial phonons, which exhibit magnetic responses despite only carrying pseudo angular momentum, divergent gyromagnetic ratios of phonons, in which a magnetic moment is produced despite vanishing angular momentum, and anisotropic gyromagnetic ratios of phonons, which make the phonon angular momentum and magnetic moment noncollinear. Our results shed light on the origin and nature of phonon magnetism and suggest the existence of phononomagnetic hidden order.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2024

Terahertz photocurrent probe of quantum geometry and interactions in magic-angle twisted bilayer graphene

Moiré materials represent strongly interacting electron systems bridging topological and correlated physics. Despite significant advances, decoding wavefunction properties underlying the quantum geometry remains challenging. Here, we utilize polarization-resolved photocurrent measurements to probe magic-angle twisted bilayer graphene, leveraging its sensitivity to the Berry connection that encompasses quantum "textures" of electron wavefunctions. Using terahertz light resonant with optical transitions of its flat bands, we observe bulk photocurrents driven by broken symmetries and reveal the interplay between electron interactions and quantum geometry. We observe inversion-breaking gapped states undetectable through quantum transport, sharp changes in the polarization axes caused by interaction-induced band renormalization, and recurring photocurrent patterns at integer fillings of the moiré unit cell that track the evolution of quantum geometry through the cascade of phase transitions. The large and tunable terahertz response intrinsic to flat-band systems offers direct insights into the quantum geometry of interacting electrons and paves the way for innovative terahertz quantum technologies.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2024

Nonlinear optical responses and quantum geometry in rhombohedral trilayer graphene

We theoretically study the nonlinear optical response of ABC trilayer graphene with inversion symmetry broken by the application of a displacement field perpendicular to the trilayer. We show that rhombohedral trilayer graphene exhibits a large bulk photovoltaic effect arising from a DC shift current response. The conductivity of the trilayer contains features similar to AB bilayer graphene as well as features distinct from AB bilayer graphene. The new features of ABC trilayer graphene relative to AB bilayer graphene arise from the quantum geometric features of the electronic band structure and can be tuned by varying the displacement field. We focus on a regime of displacement field where certain band gaps close and reopen away from the charge neutrality point leading to drastic changes in the quantum geometric structure in momentum space, a feature characteristic of the trilayer graphene band structure. These features manifest as a sign change in shift current conductivity in a certain frequency window and can thus serve as a probe of quantum geometry.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2024

Enhancing Shift Current via Virtual Multiband Transitions

Finding materials exhibiting substantial shift current holds the potential for designing shift current-based photovoltaics that outperform conventional solar cells. However, the myriad of factors governing shift current response poses significant challenges in designing devices that showcase large shift current. Here, we propose a general design principle that exploits inter-orbital mixing to excite virtual multiband transitions in materials with multiple flat bands to achieve enhanced shift current response. We further explicitly relate this design principle to maximizing Wannier function spread as expressed through the formalism of quantum geometry. We demonstrate the viability of our design using a 1D stacked Rice-Mele model. Then, we consider a concrete material realization - alternating angle twisted multilayer graphene (TMG) - a natural platform to experimentally realize such an effect. We identify a new set of twist angles at which the shift current response is maximized via virtual transitions for each multilayer graphene and highlight the importance of TMG as a promising material to achieve an enhanced shift current response at terahertz frequencies. Our proposed mechanism also applies to other 2D systems and can serve as a guiding principle for designing multiband systems that exhibit enhanced shift current response.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2023

Nonlinear optical responses in multi-orbital topological superconductors

We theoretically study first and second-order optical responses in a transition metal dichalcogenide monolayer with distinct trivial, nodal, and time-reversal invariant topological superconducting (TRITOPS) phases. We show that the second-order DC response, also known as the photogalvanic response, contains signatures for differentiating these phases while the first-order optical response does not. We find that the high-frequency photogalvanic response is insensitive to the phase of the system, while the low-frequency response exhibits features distinguishing the three phases. At zero doping, corresponding to an electron filling in which the Fermi level lies at nodal points, there are opposite sign zero-frequency divergences in the response when approaching the nodal phase boundaries from the trivial and the TRITOPS phases. In the trivial phase, both the high-frequency and low-frequency response of the system are negative, but in the TRITOPS phase, the low-frequency response becomes positive while the high-frequency response remains negative. Furthermore, since phase transitions are controlled by the Rashba spin-orbit coupling and the ratio of intra-orbital and inter-orbital paring amplitudes, our results not only help distinguish the phases but can also provide an estimate of the pairing amplitudes based on the photogalvanic response of the system.

cond-mat.supr-con↗

arXiv2023

Flat bands and multi-state memory devices from chiral domain wall superlattices in magnetic Weyl semimetals

We propose a novel analog memory device utilizing the gigantic magnetic Weyl semimetal (MWSM) domain wall (DW) magnetoresistance. We predict that the nucleation of domain walls between contacts will strongly modulate the conductance and allow for multiple memory states, which has been long sought-after for use in magnetic random access memories or memristive neuromorphic computing platforms. We motivate this conductance modulation by analyzing the electronic structure of the helically-magnetized MWSM Hamiltonian, and report tunable flat bands in the direction of transport in a helically-magnetized region of the sample for Bloch and Neel-type domain walls via the onset of a local axial Landau level spectrum within the bulk of the superlattice. We show that Bloch devices also provide means for the generation of chirality-polarized currents, which provides a path towards nanoelectronic utilization of chirality as a new degree of freedom in spintronics.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2023

Giant effective magnetic moments of chiral phonons from orbit-lattice coupling

Circularly polarized lattice vibrations carry angular momentum and lead to magnetic responses in applied magnetic fields or when resonantly driven with ultrashort laser pulses. Recent measurements have found responses that are orders of magnitude larger than those calculated in prior theoretical studies. Here, we present a microscopic model for the effective magnetic moments of chiral phonons in magnetic materials that is able to reproduce the experimentally measured magnitudes and that allows us to make quantitative predictions for materials with giant magnetic responses using microscopic parameters. Our model is based on orbit-lattice couplings that hybridize optical phonons with orbital electronic transitions. We apply our model to two types of materials: $4f$ rare-earth halide paramagnets and $3d$ transition-metal oxide magnets. In both cases, we find that chiral phonons can carry giant effective magnetic moments of the order of a Bohr magneton, orders of magnitude larger than previous predictions.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2023

Photogalvanic response in multi-Weyl semimetals

We investigate the dependence of the photogalvanic response of a multi-Weyl semimetal on its topological charge, tilt, and chemical potential. We derive analytical expressions for the shift and injection conductivities for tilted charge-$n$ Weyl points $(n=1,2,3)$ using a low energy two-band effective Hamiltonian. For double-Weyl semimetals, we also compute the response from two-band and four-band tight-binding models with broken time-reversal symmetry to study the effect of band bending and the contributions from higher bands. We find a significant deviation in the responses obtained from the effective low-energy continuum model and more realistic four-band continuum and tight-binding models. We analyze several different limits of these models. We describe the nature of the deviations and provide estimates of their dependence on the frequency and other model parameters. Our analysis provides a simple explanation for the first-principle calculation based frequency dependence of the injection current in SrSi$_2$. Additionally, we find interesting parameter regimes where the frequency dependence of the non-linear optical response can be directly used to probe the type-I/type-II nature of the Weyl cone. We obtain analytical results for the charge-4 Weyl semimetal by reducing the original problem involving a triple $k$-space integral to one with only a double integral. This simplification allows us to extract all relevant information about the nature of its second-order dc response and the precise condition for observing circular photogalvanic effect quantization. The semi-analytical approach presented here can also be extended to a systematic study of second harmonic generation and first-order optical conductivity in charge-4 Weyl semimetals.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2023

Observation of Colossal Terahertz Magnetoresistance and Magnetocapacitance in a Perovskite Manganite

We have studied the terahertz response of a bulk single crystal of La$_{0.875}$Sr$_{0.125}$MnO$_3$ at around its Curie temperature, observing large changes in the real and imaginary parts of the optical conductivity as a function of magnetic field. The terahertz resistance and capacitance extracted from the optical conductivity rapidly increased with increasing magnetic field and did not show any sign of saturation up to 6 T, reaching 60% and 15%, respectively, at 180 K. The observed terahertz colossal magnetoresistance and magnetocapacitance effects can be qualitatively explained by using a two-component model that assumes the coexistence of two phases with vastly different conductivities. These results demonstrate the potential use of perovskite manganites for developing efficient terahertz devices based on magnetic modulations of the amplitude and phase of terahertz waves.

physics.optics↗

arXiv2023

Chiral Phonons with Giant Magnetic Moments in a Topological Crystalline Insulator

We have studied the magnetic response of transverse optical phonons in Pb$_{1-x}$Sn$_{x}$Te films. Polarization-dependent terahertz magnetospectroscopy measurements revealed Zeeman splittings and diamagnetic shifts, demonstrating that these phonon modes become chiral in magnetic fields. Films in the topological crystalline insulator phase ($x > 0.32$) exhibited magnetic moment values that are larger than those for topologically trivial films ($x < 0.32$) by two orders of magnitude. Furthermore, the sign of the effective $g$-factor was opposite in the two phases, which can be explained by our theoretical model. These results strongly indicate the existence of interplay between the magnetic properties of chiral phonons and the topology of electronic band structure.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2022

Light driven magnetic transitions in transition metal dichalcogenide heterobilayers

Motivated by the recent excitement around the physics of twisted transition metal dichalcogenide (TMD) multilayer systems, we study strongly correlated phases of TMD heterobilayers under the influence of light. We consider both waveguide light and circularly polarized light. The former allows for longitudinally polarized light, which in the high frequency limit can be used to selectively modify interlayer hoppings in a tight-binding model. We argue based on quasi-degenerate perturbation theory that changes to the interlayer hoppings can be captured as a modulation to the strength of the moiré potential in a continuum model. As a consequence, waveguide light can be used to drive transitions between a myriad of different magnetic phases, including a transition from a $120^\circ$ Neel phase to a stripe ordered magnetic phase, or from a spin density wave phase to a paramagnetic phase, among others. When the system is subjected to circularly polarized light we find that the effective mass of the active TMD layer is modified by an applied electromagnetic field. By simultaneously applying waveguide light and circularly polarized light to a system, one has a high level of control in moving through the phase diagram in-situ. Lastly, we comment on the experimental feasibility of Floquet state preparation and argue that it is within reach of available techniques when the system is coupled to a judiciously chosen bath.

cond-mat.str-el↗