Physicists have been trying to identify reliable strategies to manipulate quantum states in solid-state materials, cold atoms and other systems, as this could inform the development of new technologies. One of these strategies is Floquet engineering, which entails the periodic driving of quantum states of matter.
Researchers at Tsinghua University, Beihang University and the Chinese Academy of Sciences in China have recently demonstrated the experimental realization of Floquet band engineering in a model semiconductor, namely black phosphorus. Their paper, published in Nature, could inform future research efforts exploring the Floquet engineering of semiconducting materials and trying to realize light-induced emerging phenomena, such as light-induced topological phase transitions.
"Light-matter interaction plays critical roles in experimental condensed matter physics and materials sciences, not only as experimental probes for revealing the underlying physics of low-dimensional quantum materials, but more importantly, as effective control knobs for manipulating the electronic structures and quantum states in the non-equilibrium state," Shuyun Zhou, who initiated and directed this research, told Phys.org.
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