Electrically Tunable Terahertz Chirality from Quantum Geometry

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates electrical control of terahertz emission chirality in a topological semimetal by tuning Fermi surfaces with electrostatic gating, enabling polarization control of THz radiation.

Contribution

It introduces a method to electrically manipulate quantum geometric effects in a 3D Dirac semimetal to control terahertz emission polarization.

Findings

Gate tuning modulates Berry curvature-driven THz component by up to 60% and 49%.

Orthogonal photon-drag component remains unchanged under gating.

Achieved near-circular polarization (2) at +10 V gate bias.

Abstract

Quantum geometry encoded in the momentum space structure of electronic wavefunctions, governs charge dynamics through Berry curvature, enabling unconventional transport and optical responses. In topological semimetals, this geometry is sampled over Fermi pockets, suggesting electrical control by Fermi surface tuning, yet such control has remained largely limited to DC transport. Here we show that electrostatic gating of the 3D Dirac semimetal Cd3As2 reshapes Fermi pockets surrounding photoinduced Floquet Weyl nodes, enabling electrical control of terahertz (THz) emission chirality. Gate tuning selectively modulates the Berry curvature driven linearly polarized THz component by up to 60% and 49% at positive and negative bias, respectively, while the orthogonal linearly polarized photon-drag component remains unchanged. With the two orthogonal fields intrinsically phase-locked at \sfrac{\pi}{2} by the excitation geometry, the selective gate-tuned amplitude control enables the polarization tuning across the Poincar\'e sphere, achieving near-circular polarization (\chi\approx-42{\deg}) at +10 V. These results establish Fermi surface tuning as a general route to programmable quantum geometric control of chiral terahertz emission.