Nanowerk December 8, 2021
Although there are strategies to drastically alter electronic and magnetic properties by optically inducing non-trivial band topologies, emergent spin interactions and superconductivity, methods of coherently engineering optical properties on demand are far less understood. An international team of researchers (Caltech, UC Santa Barbara, South Korea) has demonstrated coherent control and giant modulation of optical nonlinearity in a van der Waals layered magnetic insulator, manganese phosphorus trisulfide (MnPS3). They observed a coherent on–off switching of its optical second harmonic generation efficiency on the timescale of 100 femtoseconds with no measurable dissipation. At driving electric fields of the order of 109 volts per metre, the on–off ratio exceeds 10, which is limited only by the sample damage threshold. Calculations based on a single-ion model of MnPS3 reproduced the measured driving field amplitude and polarization dependence of the effect. The approach can be applied to a broad range of insulating materials and could lead to dynamically designed nonlinear optical elements…read more. TECHNICAL ARTICLEÂ
Coherent drive-induced state modification. Crédit: Nature volume 600, pages235–239 (2021)Â