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百年磁光效应的新认识

New understanding in century-old magneto-optical effects

  • 摘要: 磁光效应反映了光与磁之间最基本的相互作用,是凝聚态物理学中一个古老且迷人的研究议题。自1846年发现磁光法拉第效应至今,关于磁光效应的研究已经历了一个半世纪之久。文章将介绍磁光效应领域的三项最新研究进展。其一,磁光效应被发现可以存在于净磁化强度为零的反铁磁中,且表现出对矢量自旋手性的强烈依赖性。其二,磁光效应的物理起源被发现可以是与自旋轨道耦合和能带交换劈裂无关的标量自旋手性,即拓扑磁光效应;拓扑磁光效应可以进一步实现量子化,即量子拓扑磁光效应。其三,磁光效应被发现与非磁性原子位置变化引起的晶体手性密切相关,即晶体手性磁光效应。这三项研究进展突破了过去人们对磁光效应的传统认识,或将推动该领域的进一步发展。

     

    Abstract: Magneto-optical (MO) effects, reflecting the basic interactions between light and magnetism, have long been recognized as one of the most attractive subjects in condensed matter physics. Since the discovery of the MO Faraday effect in 1846, studies of MO effects have continued for more than a century and a half. In this article, we introduce three new discoveries in this field. First, MO effects are surprisingly found to exist in antiferromagnets even though the net magnetization is zero, and are very sensitive to the vector spin chirality. Second, they can originate from the scalar spin chirality independent of spin-orbit coupling and band exchange splitting, namely, topological MO effects, which can be further quantized. Third, they are strongly related to the crystal chirality induced by rearrangement of the nonmagnetic atoms, which is called crystal chirality MO effects. These new advances overturn the traditional understanding of MO effects in the past, and may have a far-reaching impact on the development of this field.

     

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