Unconventional Photocurrents from Surface Fermi Arcs in Topological Chiral Semimetals
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The nonlinear optical responses from topological semimetals are crucial in both understanding the fundamental properties of quantum materials and designing next-generation light sensors or solar cells. However, previous work focused on the optical effects from bulk states only, disregarding the responses from topological surface states. In this Letter, we propose a new surface-only photocurrent response from chiral Fermi arcs. Using the ideal topological chiral semimetal RhSi as a representative, we quantitatively compute the photogalvanic currents from Fermi arcs on different surfaces. By rigorous crystal symmetry analysis, we demonstrate that Fermi arc photogalvanic currents can be perpendicular to the bulk injection currents regardless of the choice of materials surface. We then generalize this finding to other cubic chiral space groups and predict material candidates. Our theory reveals a powerful notion where common crystalline symmetry can be used to completely disentangle bulk and surface optical responses in many conducting material families.
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Photocurrents resulting from Fermi arc surface states can be separated from bulk injection currents arising within nonsymmorphic crystal structures.
“Recent theoretical predictions have suggested that photocurrents resulting from Fermi arc surface states can be separated from bulk injection currents arising within nonsymmorphic crystal structures107.”
From Ultrafast terahertz emission from emerging symmetry-broken materials (2023) · cites this paper as [107]
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Ultrafast terahertz emission from emerging symmetry-broken materials
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- Authors
- Chang, G., Yin, J.-X., Neupert, T., Sanchez, D. S., Belopolski, I., Zhang, S. S., Cochran, T. A., Chéng, Z., Hsu, M.-C., Huang, S.-M., Lian, B., Xu, S.-Y., Lin, H., & Hasan, M. Z.
- Affiliations
- Princeton University (US)
- University of Zurich (CH)
- National Sun Yat-sen University (TW)
- Harvard University (US)
- Institute of Physics, Academia Sinica (TW)
- Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (US)
- ORCID
- Venue
- Physical Review Letters
- Publisher
- American Physical Society (APS)
- Published
- 2020-04-24
- Volume
- 124
- Issue
- 16
- Pages
- 166404-166404
- ISSN
- 0031-9007 (ISSN-L)
- 1079-7114
- OpenAlex
- W3018166951
- Cited by
- 72
- References
- 54
- Citations by year
- 2026: 5 · 2025: 11 · 2024: 11 · 2023: 13 · 2022: 5 · 2021: 18 · 2020: 9
- FWCI
- 4.58
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- www.zora.uzh.ch
- Licence
- Locations
- Physical Review Letters (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Zurich Open Repository and Archive (University of Zurich) (acceptedVersion, other-oa)
- OSTI OAI (U.S. Department of Energy Office of Scientific and Technical Information) (submittedVersion)
- eScholarship (California Digital Library) (submittedVersion)
- Zurich Open Repository and Archive (University of Zurich) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- Zurich Open Repository and Archive (University of Zurich)
- Funders
- U.S. Department of Energy (DOE/BES DE-FG-02-05ER46200)
- Basic Energy Sciences
- Miller Institute of Basic Research in Science
- University of California Berkeley
- Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
- California Institute of Technology
- Ministry of Science and Technology, Taiwan (MOST109-2112-M-001-014-MY3, MOST108-2112-M-110-013-MY3)
- H2020 European Research Council (ERC-StG-Neupert-757867-PARATOP)
- Harvard University
- National Science Foundation (DGE-1656466)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Physics and Astronomy › Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics › Topological Materials and Phenomena
- Physical Sciences › Materials Science › Materials Chemistry › 2D Materials and Applications
- Physical Sciences › Physics and Astronomy › Condensed Matter Physics › Advanced Condensed Matter Physics
- Keywords
- photogalvanic effect, Fermi arcs, topological semimetals, RhSi, nonlinear optical properties, crystal symmetry, topological surface states
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