Generation and manipulation of chiral terahertz waves emitted from the three-dimensional topological insulator Bi2Te3

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates the generation and manipulation of chiral terahertz waves from Bi2Te3 topological insulator nanofilms, enabling controllable polarization states for advanced terahertz applications.

Contribution

It introduces a method to generate and control chiral terahertz waves from topological insulators, revealing the role of photogalvanic effects in polarization shaping.

Findings

Successful generation of chiral terahertz waves with controllable properties

Identification of photogalvanic effects as the mechanism for polarization control

Enhanced understanding of ultrafast spin current control in light-matter interactions

Abstract

Arbitrary manipulation of broadband terahertz waves with flexible polarization shaping at the source has great potential in expanding real applications such as imaging, information encryption, and all-optically coherent control of terahertz nonlinear phenomena. Topological insulators featuring unique spin-momentum locked surface state have already exhibited very promising prospects in terahertz emission, detection and modulation, which may lay a foundation for future on-chip topological insulator-based terahertz systems. However, polarization shaped terahertz emission with prescribed manners of arbitrarily manipulated temporal evolution of the amplitude and electric-field vector direction based on topological insulators have not yet been explored. Here we systematically investigated the terahertz radiation from topological insulator Bi2Te3 nanofilms driven by femtosecond laser pulses, and successfully realized the generation of efficient chiral terahertz waves with controllable chirality, ellipticity, and principle axis. The convenient engineering of the chiral terahertz waves was interpreted by photogalvanic effect induced photocurrent, while the linearly polarized terahertz waves originated from linear photogalvanic effect induced shift currents. We believe our works not only help further understanding femtosecond coherent control of ultrafast spin currents in light-matter interaction but also provide an effective way to generate spin-polarized terahertz waves and accelerate the proliferation of twisting the terahertz waves at the source.