Impact of high-frequency pumping on anomalous finite-size effects in three-dimensional topological insulators

Lowering of the thickness of a thin-film three-dimensional topological insulator down to a few nanometers results in the gap opening in the spectrum of topologically protected two-dimensional surface states. This phenomenon, which is referred to as the anomalous finite-size effect, originates from hybridization between the states propagating along the opposite boundaries. In this work, we consider a bismuth-based topological insulator and show how the coupling to an intense high-frequency linearly polarized pumping can further be used to manipulate the value of a gap. We address this effect within recently proposed Brillouin-Wigner perturbation theory that allows us to map a time-dependent problem into a stationary one. Our analysis reveals that both the gap and the components of the group velocity of the surface states can be tuned in a controllable fashion by adjusting the intensity of the driving field within an experimentally accessible range and demonstrate the effect of light-induced band inversion in the spectrum of the surface states for high enough values of the pump.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figure

Another view on Gilbert damping in two-dimensional ferromagnets

A keen interest towards technological implications of spin-orbit driven magnetization dynamics requests a proper theoretical description, especially in the context of a microscopic framework, to be developed. Indeed, magnetization dynamics is so far approached within Landau-Lifshitz-Gilbert equation which characterizes torques on magnetization on purely phenomenological grounds. Particularly, spin-orbit coupling does not respect spin conservation, leading thus to angular momentum transfer to lattice and damping as a result. This mechanism is accounted by the Gilbert damping torque which describes relaxation of the magnetization to equilibrium. In this study we work out a microscopic Kubo-Streda formula for the components of the Gilbert damping tensor and apply the elaborated formalism to a two-dimensional Rashba ferromagnet in the weak disorder limit. We show that an exact analytical expression corresponding to the Gilbert damping parameter manifests linear dependence on the scattering rate and retains the constant value up to room temperature when no vibrational degrees of freedom are present in the system. We argue that the methodology developed in this paper can be safely applied to bilayers made of non- and ferromagnetic metals, e.g., CoPt

Transport properties of a two-dimensional electron gas dressed by light

We show theoretically that the strong interaction of a two-dimensional electron gas (2DEG) with a dressing electromagnetic field drastically changes its transport properties. Particularly, the dressing field leads to a giant increase of conductivity (which can reach thousands of percents), resulting in nontrivial oscillating dependence of conductivity on the field intensity, and suppressing the weak localization of 2DEG. As a consequence, the developed theory opens an unexplored way to control transport properties of 2DEG by a strong high-frequency electromagnetic field. From an experimental viewpoint, this theory is applicable directly to quantum wells exposed to a laser-generated electromagnetic wave.Published versio