Berry Curvature Spectroscopy from Bloch Oscillations

ORAL

Abstract

Artificial crystals such as moiré superlattices can have a real-space periodicity much larger than the underlying atomic scale. This facilitates the presence of Bloch oscillations in the presence of a static electric field. We demonstrate that the optical response of such a system, when dressed with a static field, becomes resonant at the frequencies of Bloch oscillations, which are in the terahertz regime when the lattice constant is of the order of 10 nm. In particular, we show within a semiclassical band-projected theory that resonances in the dressed Hall conductivity are proportional to the lattice Fourier components of the Berry curvature. We illustrate our results with a low-energy model on an effective honeycomb lattice.

* This research was funded in whole, or in part, by the Luxembourg National Research Fund (FNR) (project No. 16515716). C.D.B. and E.J.M. are supported by the Department of Energy under grant DE-FG02-84ER45118.

Publication: Berry Curvature Spectroscopy from Bloch Oscillations, Christophe De Beule and E. J. Mele, Phys. Rev. Lett. (accepted 10 October 2023, in press) (preprint: arXiv:2305.14532)

Presenters

  • Christophe De Beule

    University of Pennsylvania

Authors

  • Christophe De Beule

    University of Pennsylvania

  • Eugene J Mele

    University of Pennsylvania