Giant electro-optic effect in chiral topological semimetal RhSi

TL;DR

This paper reports a giant electro-optic effect in the chiral topological semimetal RhSi, with coefficients vastly exceeding traditional materials, promising advancements in optical communication technologies.

Contribution

It reveals the large electro-optic coefficient in RhSi due to its high-fold chiral fermions and topological properties, a significant enhancement over conventional materials.

Findings

Electro-optic coefficient of ~7000 pm/V at specific photon energies.

Significantly enhanced second order conductivity due to band topology.

Potential for low-voltage electro-optic applications in telecom wavelengths.

Abstract

We studied the linear electro-optic effect of chiral topological semimetal RhSi which is characterized by high-fold chiral fermions separated in energy space. We identify that the general second order conductivity $\sigma^{(2)}_{xyz}(\omega=\omega_{1}+\omega_{2};\omega_{1},\omega_{2})$ includes a real symmetric component and an imaginary antisymmetric component, which are from the inter-band shift and intra-band injection current with frequency $\omega$, respectively. The $\sigma^{(2)}_{xyz}$ is significantly enhanced by the high electron velocity and nontrivial band topology of chiral fermion, and modifies the phase velocity of light wave. We also predict that the electro-optic coefficient $\chi_{xyz}^{(2)}(\omega;\omega,0)$ of chiral crystal RhSi is about 7000 pm/V at photon energy 0.01 eV and 1.1 eV, which is about 200 times that of widely used LiNbO$_{3}$ crystal. The giant electro-optic coefficient renders a relatively low half-wave voltage in order of hundreds volt, and demonstrates potential application as electro-optic crystals for the wavelength in the second telecom window of optical fiber communications.