Circular Dichroism of Emergent Chiral Stacking Orders in Quasi-One-Dimensional Charge Density Waves

Sun-Woo Kim, Hyun-Jung Kim, Sangmo Cheon, and Tae-Hwan Kim
Phys. Rev. Lett. 128, 046401 – Published 25 January 2022
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Abstract

Chirality-driven optical properties in charge density waves are of fundamental and practical importance. Here, we investigate the interaction between circularly polarized light and emergent chiral stacking orders in quasi-one-dimensional (quasi-1D) charge-density waves (CDWs) with density-functional theory calculations. In our specific system, self-assembled In nanowires on a Si(111) surface, spontaneous mirror symmetry breaking leads to four symmetrically distinct degenerate quasi-1D CDW structures, which exhibit geometrical chirality. Such geometrical chirality may naturally induce optically active phenomena even when the quasi-1D CDW structures are stacked perpendicular to the CDW chain direction. Indeed, we find that left- and right-chiral stacking orders show distinct circular dichroism responses while a nonchiral stacking order has no circular dichroism. Such optical responses are attributed to the existence of glide mirror symmetry of the CDW stacking orders. Our findings suggest that the CDW chiral stacking orders can lead to diverse active optical phenomena such as chirality-dependent circular dichroism, which can be observed in scanning tunneling luminescence measurements with circularly polarized light.

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  • Received 4 September 2021
  • Accepted 22 December 2021

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.128.046401

© 2022 American Physical Society

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Condensed Matter, Materials & Applied Physics

Authors & Affiliations

Sun-Woo Kim1,2, Hyun-Jung Kim3,*, Sangmo Cheon1,4,†, and Tae-Hwan Kim5,6,‡

  • 1Department of Physics and Research Institute for Natural Science, Hanyang University, Seoul 04763, Korea
  • 2Department of Physics, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Daejeon 34141, Korea
  • 3Peter Grünberg Institut and Institute for Advanced Simulation, Forschungszentrum Jülich and JARA, D-52425 Jülich, Germany
  • 4Institute for High Pressure, Hanyang University, Seoul 04763, Korea
  • 5Department of Physics, Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH), Pohang 37673, Korea
  • 6MPPHC-CPM, Max Planck POSTECH/Korea Research Initiative, Pohang 37673, Korea

  • *h.kim@fz-juelich.de
  • sangmocheon@hanyang.ac.kr
  • taehwan@postech.ac.kr

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Issue

Vol. 128, Iss. 4 — 28 January 2022

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