Dynamical phase transitions in the photodriven charge-ordered Dirac-electron system

TL;DR

This paper theoretically investigates photoinduced phase transitions in a charge-ordered Dirac-electron system, revealing successive transitions to a Dirac semimetal and a Chern insulator driven by circularly polarized light.

Contribution

It introduces a combined numerical approach to analyze dynamical phase transitions in an interacting Dirac-electron system under irradiation, highlighting the mechanisms of gap closing and topological gap opening.

Findings

Successive phase transitions from charge-ordered insulator to Dirac semimetal and Chern insulator.

Circularly polarized light induces topological phase transitions via gap closing and symmetry breaking.

Charge dynamics of driven correlated Dirac electrons govern the photoinduced phenomena.

Abstract

Photoinduced phase transitions and charge dynamics in the interacting Dirac-electron system with a charge-ordered ground state are theoretically studied by taking an organic salt $\alpha$-(BEDT-TTF)$_2$I$_3$. By analysing the extended Hubbard model for this compound using a combined method of numerical simulations based on the time-dependent Schr\"odinger equation and the Floquet theory, we observe successive dynamical phase transitions from the charge-ordered insulator to a gapless Dirac semimetal and, eventually, to a Chern insulator phase under irradiation with circularly polarized light. These phase transitions occur as a consequence of two major effects of circularly polarized light, i.e., closing of the charge gap through melting the charge order and opening of the topological gap by breaking the time reversal symmetry at the Dirac points. We demonstrate that these photoinduced phenomena are governed by charge dynamics of driven correlated Dirac electrons.