Light-induced Vortex States in Dirac-like Systems

Utilizing Floquet engineering of materials leads to the hybridization of their electronic bands and an accompanying topological phase change. Light, with its multiple degrees of freedom, i.e., polarization, intensity, and frequency, impacts matter through their interaction. Still, additional degrees of freedom can arise from the spatial control of optical beams, and vortex light beams are one such example, as they carry orbital angular momentum in addition to their polarization. In this work, we consider a two-dimensional massive Dirac-like system irradiated by a monochromatic vortex light beam. Applying Floquet's theorem, we find the conserved total angular momentum operator to determine the eigenstates of the space-dependent Floquet Hamiltonian and present a complete description of the photon-dressed electronic vortex states that emerge from this irradiated system in terms of their angular momentum-dependent dispersion relation, vorticity, topological properties, and their extension across the vortex-beam irradiated sample.