Mesoscopic magnetoelectric effect in chaotic quantum dots

TL;DR

This paper investigates the mesoscopic magnetoelectric effect in chaotic quantum dots, showing how ac electric fields induce a measurable magnetization flux sensitive to time-reversal symmetry breaking, with results aligning with recent experimental observations.

Contribution

It provides an analytic and numerical analysis of the inverse Faraday effect in quantum dots, highlighting the influence of frequency, screening, and contact coupling without spin-orbit effects.

Findings

Inverse Faraday effect scale is quadratic in voltage.

Magnetization flux depends on ac frequency, screening, and contact coupling.

Results agree qualitatively with recent TRS-breaking experiments.

Abstract

The magnitude of the inverse Faraday effect (IFE), a static magnetization due to an ac electric field, can be strongly increased in a mesoscopic sample, sensitive to time-reversal symmetry (TRS) breaking. Random rectification of ac voltages leads to a magnetization flux, which can be detected by an asymmetry of Hall resistances in a multi-terminal setup. In the absence of applied magnetic field through a chaotic quantum dot the IFE scale, quadratic in voltage, is found as an analytic function of the ac frequency, screening, and coupling to the contacts and floating probes, and numerically it does not show any effect of spin-orbit interaction. Our results qualitatively agree with a recent experiment on TRS-breaking in a six-terminal Hall cross.