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Register a new userAn Example of Time Reversal Invariant Kerr Effect
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Authors
Alberto Cortijo
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Here we describe how certain classes of two dimensional topological insulators, including the CdTe$/$HgTe quantum wells, display a new type of optical activity in two dimensions similar to the magneto-optical Kerr effect in the quantum Hall effect. This optical activity is characterized by a genuine Kerr angle and it is compatible with time reversal symmetry, being thus fundamentally different to other known types of time reversal invariant optical activity. The term responsible of such optical activity, having the form of $(mathbf{E}cdotpartialmathbf{B}/partial t-mathbf{B}cdotpartialmathbf{E}/partial t)$, can be considered a time reversal invariant counterpart of the magneto-electric term $mathbf{E}cdotmathbf{B}$. The microscopical origin of this response is a chiral non-minimal coupling between electrons and the external electromagnetic field. This optical activity constitutes a proof of principle that there is possible to find systems that are time reversal invariant displaying a genuine Kerr effect.
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Charge-density waves (CDWs) in Weyl semimetals (WSMs) have been shown to induce an exotic axionic insulating phase in which the sliding mode (phason) of the CDW acts as a dynamical axion field, giving rise to a large positive magneto-conductance. In this work, we predict that dynamical strain can induce a bulk orbital magnetization in time-reversal- (TR-) invariant WSMs that are gapped by a CDW. We term this effect the dynamical piezomagnetic effect (DPME). Unlike in [J. Gooth et al, Nature 575, 315 (2019)], the DPME introduced in this work occurs in a bulk-constant (i.e., static and spatially homogeneous in the bulk) CDW, and does not rely on fluctuations, such as a phason. By studying the low-energy effective theory and a minimal tight-binding (TB) model, we find that the DPME originates from an effective valley axion field that couples the electromagnetic gauge field with a strain-induced pseudo-gauge field. We further find that the DPME has a discontinuous change at a critical value of the phase of the CDW order parameter. We demonstrate that, when there is a jump in the DPME, the surface of the system undergoes a topological quantum phase transition (TQPT), while the bulk remains gapped. Hence, the DPME provides a bulk signature of the boundary TQPT in a TR-invariant Weyl-CDW.
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Two-dimensional (2D) topological electronic insulators are known to give rise to gapless edge modes, which underlie low energy dynamics, including electrical and thermal transport. This has been thoroughly investigated in the context of quantum Hall phases, and time-reversal invariant topological insulators. Here we study the edge of a 2D, topologically trivial insulating phase, as a function of the strength of the electronic interactions and the steepness of the confining potential. For sufficiently smooth confining potentials, alternating compressible and incompressible stripes appear at the edge. Our findings signal the emergence of gapless edge modes which may give rise to finite conductance at the edge. This would suggest a novel scenario of a non-topological metal-insulator transition in clean 2D systems. The incompressible stripes appear at commensurate fillings and may exhibit broken translational invariance along the edge in the form of charge density wave ordering. These are separated by structureless compressible stripes.
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