Robust Floquet-induced gap in irradiated graphite
Abstract
Floquet engineering provides an emerging pathway for tailoring the electronic states of quantum materials through time-periodic drive. A critical step along this direction is achieving light-induced modifications of the dynamical electronic structure, such as avoided-crossing gap at the Floquet Brillouin zone boundary, via efficient coupling of electrons with the coherent light-field. Here, we report robust Floquet-induced gap in bulk graphite that persists despite the presence of interlayer coupling and photo-excitation. Using time- and angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy with intense mid-infrared pumping, we directly reveal Floquet-induced gaps at resonance points both in the valence and conduction bands, accompanied by coherent Floquet sidebands. The gap and sidebands coexist with photo-excited carriers, yet their distinct timescales allow us to disentangle their origins. Our demonstration of robust Floquet-induced gaps establishes graphite as a platform for coherent manipulation of Dirac fermions and realization of light-engineered quantum phases.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2603.28724,
title = {Robust Floquet-induced gap in irradiated graphite},
author = {Fei Wang and Xuanxi Cai and Wanying Chen and Jinxi Lu and Tianshuang Sheng and Xiao Tang and Jiansong Li and Hongyun Zhang and Shuyun Zhou},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2603.28724},
year = {2026}
}