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1. High-harmonic generation in spin and charge current pumping at ferromagnetic or antiferromagnetic resonance in the presence of spin–orbit coupling

   https://doi.org/10.1088/2515-7639/aceaad  

   Varela-Manjarres, Jalil ; Nikolić, Branislav K. ( August 2023 , Journal of Physics: Materials)

   One of the cornerstone effects in spintronics is spin pumping by dynamical magnetization that is steadily precessing (around, for example, thez-axis) with frequencyω₀due to absorption of low-power microwaves of frequencyω₀under the resonance conditions and in the absence of any applied bias voltage. The two-decades-old ‘standard model’ of this effect, based on the scattering theory of adiabatic quantum pumping, predicts that component$I^{S_z}$of spin current vector$(I^{S_x}(t),I^{S_y}(t),I^{S_z})\propto {\omega }_0$is time-independent while$I^{S_x}(t)$and$I^{S_y}(t)$oscillate harmonically in time with a single frequencyω₀whereas pumped charge current is zero$I\equiv 0$in the same adiabatic$\propto {\omega }_0$limit. Here we employ more general approaches than the ‘standard model’, namely the time-dependent nonequilibrium Green’s function (NEGF) and the Floquet NEGF, to predict unforeseen features of spin pumping: namely precessing localized magnetic moments within a ferromagnetic metal (FM) or antiferromagnetic metal (AFM), whose conduction electrons are exposed to spin–orbit coupling (SOC) of either intrinsic or proximity origin, will pump both spin$I^{S_{\alpha }}(t)$and chargeI(t) currents. All four of these functions harmonically oscillate in time at both even and odd integer multiples$N{\omega }_0$of the driving frequencyω₀. The cutoff order of such high harmonics increases with SOC strength, reaching$N_{\mathrm{m}\mathrm{a}\mathrm{x}}\simeq 11$in the one-dimensional FM or AFM models chosen for demonstration. A higher cutoff$N_{\mathrm{m}\mathrm{a}\mathrm{x}}\simeq 25$can be achieved in realistic two-dimensional (2D) FM models defined on a honeycomb lattice, and we provide a prescription of how to realize them using 2D magnets and their heterostructures.

    

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2. Tunable exciton-polaritons emerging from WS2 monolayer excitons in a photonic lattice at room temperature

   https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-24925-9  

   Lackner, L. ; Dusel, M. ; Egorov, O. A. ; Han, B. ; Knopf, H. ; Eilenberger, F. ; Schröder, S. ; Watanabe, K. ; Taniguchi, T. ; Tongay, S. ; et al ( December 2021 , Nature Communications)

   Abstract Engineering non-linear hybrid light-matter states in tailored lattices is a central research strategy for the simulation of complex Hamiltonians. Excitons in atomically thin crystals are an ideal active medium for such purposes, since they couple strongly with light and bear the potential to harness giant non-linearities and interactions while presenting a simple sample-processing and room temperature operability. We demonstrate lattice polaritons, based on an open, high-quality optical cavity, with an imprinted photonic lattice strongly coupled to excitons in a WS 2 monolayer. We experimentally observe the emergence of the canonical band-structure of particles in a one-dimensional lattice at room temperature, and demonstrate frequency reconfigurability over a spectral window exceeding 85 meV, as well as the systematic variation of the nearest-neighbour coupling, reflected by a tunability in the bandwidth of the p-band polaritons by 7 meV. The technology presented in this work is a critical demonstration towards reconfigurable photonic emulators operated with non-linear photonic fluids, offering a simple experimental implementation and working at ambient conditions. 

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3. Many-body spin rotation by adiabatic passage in spin-1/2 XXZ chains of ultracold atoms

   https://doi.org/10.1088/2058-9565/acd2fb  

   Dimitrova, Ivana ; Flannigan, Stuart ; Kyung Lee, Yoo ; Lin, Hanzhen ; Amato-Grill, Jesse ; Jepsen, Niklas ; Čepaitė, Ieva ; Daley, Andrew J ; Ketterle, Wolfgang ( May 2023 , Quantum Science and Technology)

   Abstract Quantum many-body phases offer unique properties and emergent phenomena, making them an active area of research. A promising approach for their experimental realization in model systems is to adiabatically follow the ground state of a quantum Hamiltonian from a product state of isolated particles to one that is strongly-correlated. Such protocols are relevant also more broadly in coherent quantum annealing and adiabatic quantum computing. Here we explore one such protocol in a system of ultracold atoms in an optical lattice. A fully magnetized state is connected to a correlated zero-magnetization state (an xy -ferromagnet) by a many-body spin rotation, realized by sweeping the detuning and power of a microwave field. The efficiency is characterized by applying a reverse sweep with a variable relative phase. We restore up to 50 % of the original magnetization independent of the relative phase, evidence for the formation of correlations. The protocol is limited by the many-body gap of the final state, which is inversely proportional to system size, and technical noise. Our experimental and theoretical studies highlight the potential and challenges for adiabatic preparation protocols to prepare many-body eigenstates of spin Hamiltonians. 

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4. Floquet engineering of strongly driven excitons in monolayer tungsten disulfide

   https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-022-01849-9  

   Kobayashi, Yuki ; Heide, Christian ; Johnson, Amalya C. ; Tiwari, Vishal ; Liu, Fang ; Reis, David A. ; Heinz, Tony F. ; Ghimire, Shambhu ( January 2023 , Nature Physics)

   Interactions of quantum materials with strong laser fields can induce exotic non-equilibrium electronic states. Monolayer transition metal dichalcogenides, a new class of direct-gap semiconductors with prominent quantum confinement, offer exceptional opportunities for the Floquet engineering of excitons, which are quasiparticle electron–hole correlated states8. Strong-field driving has the potential to achieve enhanced control of the electronic band structure and thus the possibility of opening a new realm of exciton light–matter interactions. However, a full characterization of strong-field driven exciton dynamics has been difficult. Here we use mid-infrared laser pulses below the optical bandgap to excite monolayer tungsten disulfide and demonstrate strong-field light dressing of excitons in excess of a hundred millielectronvolts. Our high-sensitivity transient absorption spectroscopy further reveals the formation of a virtual absorption feature below the 1s-exciton resonance, which we assign to a light-dressed sideband from the dark 2p-exciton state. Quantum-mechanical simulations substantiate the experimental results and enable us to retrieve real-space movies of the exciton dynamics. This study advances our understanding of the exciton dynamics in the strong-field regime, showing the possibility of harnessing ultrafast, strong-field phenomena in device applications of two-dimensional materials. 

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5. Resonantly enhanced polariton wave mixing and parametric instability in a Floquet medium

   https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0091718  

   Sugiura, Sho ; Demler, Eugene A. ; Lukin, Mikhail ; Podolsky, Daniel ( May 2022 , The Journal of Chemical Physics)

   We introduce a new theoretical approach for analyzing pump and probe experiments in non-linear systems of optical phonons. In our approach, the effect of coherently pumped polaritons is modeled as providing time-periodic modulation of the system parameters. Within this framework, propagation of the probe pulse is described by the Floquet version of Maxwell’s equations and leads to phenomena such as frequency mixing and resonant parametric production of polariton pairs. We analyze light reflection from a slab of insulating material with a strongly excited phonon-polariton mode and obtain analytic expressions for the frequency-dependent reflection coefficient for the probe pulse. Our results are in agreement with recent experiments by Cartella et al. [Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U. S. A. 115, 12148 (2018)], which demonstrated light amplification in a resonantly excited SiC insulator. We show that, beyond a critical pumping strength, such systems should exhibit Floquet parametric instability, which corresponds to resonant scattering of pump polaritons into pairs of finite momentum polaritons. We find that the parametric instability should be achievable in SiC using current experimental techniques and discuss its signatures, including the non-analytic frequency dependence of the reflection coefficient and the probe pulse afterglow. We discuss possible applications of the parametric instability phenomenon and suggest that similar types of instabilities can be present in other photoexcited non-linear systems. 

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