Berry Curvature Enhanced Nonlinear Photogalvanic Response of Type-II Weyl Cone

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that the divergence of Berry curvature at Weyl nodes in type-II Weyl semimetal TaIrTe4 leads to enhanced nonlinear photoresponses, making it promising for photodetection and energy applications.

Contribution

It provides the first direct experimental evidence linking Berry curvature divergence at Weyl nodes to large nonlinear photoresponses in a type-II Weyl semimetal.

Findings

Achieved a high photo responsivity of 130.2 mA/W at room temperature.

Observed large third-order nonlinear optical response.

Enhanced circularly polarized photocurrent related to Weyl node chirality.

Abstract

The experimental manifestation of topological effects in bulk materials under ambient conditions, especially those with practical applications, has attracted enormous research interest. Recent discovery of Weyl semimetal provides an ideal material platform for such endeavors. The Berry curvature in a Weyl semimetal becomes singular at the Weyl node, creating an effective magnetic monopole in the k-space. A pair of Weyl nodes carry quantized effective magnetic charges with opposite signs, and therefore, opposite chirality. Although Weyl-point-related signatures such as chiral anomaly and non-closing surface Fermi arcs have been detected through transport and ARPES measurements, direct experimental evidence of the effective k-space monopole of the Weyl nodes has so far been lacking. In this work, signatures of the singular topology in a type-II Weyl semimetal TaIrTe4 is revealed in the photo responses, which are shown to be directly related to the divergence of Berry curvature. As a result of the divergence of Berry curvature at the Weyl nodes, TaIrTe4 exhibits unusually large photo responsivity of 130.2 mA/W with 4-{\mu}m excitation in an unbiased field effect transistor at room temperature arising from the third-order nonlinear optical response. The room temperature mid-IR responsivity is approaching the performance of commercial HgCdTe detector operating at low temperature, making Type-II Weyl semimetal TaIrTe4 of practical importance in terms of photo sensing and solar energy harvesting. Furthermore, the high shift photocurrent response at the Weyl cones is found to enhance the circularly polarized galvanic response from Weyl cones with opposite chirality, which opens new experimental possibilities for studying and controlling the chiral polarization of Weyl Fermions through an in-plane DC electric field in addition to the optical helicities.