Anti-screening and nonequilibrium layer electric phases in graphene multilayers

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Hauptverfasser: Xiong, Ying, Rudner, Mark S., Song, Justin C. W.
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2024
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author Xiong, Ying
Rudner, Mark S.
Song, Justin C. W.
author_facet Xiong, Ying
Rudner, Mark S.
Song, Justin C. W.
contents Screening is a ubiquitous phenomenon through which the polarization of bound or mobile charges tends to reduce the strengths of electric fields inside materials. Here we show how photoexcitation can be used as a knob to transform conventional out-of-plane screening into anti-screening - the amplification of electric fields - in multilayer graphene stacks. We find that, by varying the photoexcitation intensity, multiple nonequilibrium screening regimes can be accessed, including near-zero screening, anti-screening, or overscreening (reversing electric fields). Strikingly, at modest continuous wave photoexcitation intensities, the nonequilibrium polarization states become multistable, hosting light-induced ferroelectric-like steady states with nonvanishing out-of-plane polarization (and band gaps) even in the absence of an externally applied displacement field in nominally inversion symmetric stacks. This rich phenomenology reveals a novel paradigm of dynamical quantum matter that we expect will enable a variety of nonequilibrium broken symmetry phases.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2402_14918
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Anti-screening and nonequilibrium layer electric phases in graphene multilayers
Xiong, Ying
Rudner, Mark S.
Song, Justin C. W.
Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics
Screening is a ubiquitous phenomenon through which the polarization of bound or mobile charges tends to reduce the strengths of electric fields inside materials. Here we show how photoexcitation can be used as a knob to transform conventional out-of-plane screening into anti-screening - the amplification of electric fields - in multilayer graphene stacks. We find that, by varying the photoexcitation intensity, multiple nonequilibrium screening regimes can be accessed, including near-zero screening, anti-screening, or overscreening (reversing electric fields). Strikingly, at modest continuous wave photoexcitation intensities, the nonequilibrium polarization states become multistable, hosting light-induced ferroelectric-like steady states with nonvanishing out-of-plane polarization (and band gaps) even in the absence of an externally applied displacement field in nominally inversion symmetric stacks. This rich phenomenology reveals a novel paradigm of dynamical quantum matter that we expect will enable a variety of nonequilibrium broken symmetry phases.
title Anti-screening and nonequilibrium layer electric phases in graphene multilayers
topic Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2402.14918