English

Photo-magnetization in two-dimensional sliding ferroelectrics

Materials Science 2022-03-10 v1

Abstract

Light-matter interaction is one of the key routes to understanding and manipulating geometric and electronic behaviors of materials, especially two-dimensional materials which are optically accessible owing to their high surface to volume ratio. In the current work we focus on the recently discovered two-dimensional sliding ferroelectric materials, in which the out-of-plane electric polarization can be switched with a small horizontal translation in one layer. Combining symmetry analysis and first-principles calculations, we predict that light illumination could inject non-equilibrium magnetic moments into the sliding ferroelectrics. Such magnetic moment is composed of both spin and orbital degrees of freedom contributions. We use ZrI2\mathrm{ZrI}_2, WTe2\mathrm{WTe}_2, and MoS2\mathrm{MoS}_2 bilayer ferroelectrics to illustrate our theory. Under intermediate light illumination, one can yield non-equilibrium magnetic moments on the order of 0.110.1-1 μB\mu_B in these systems, which also depends on the polarization nature of incident light. Furthermore, we show that such photo-injected magnetism changes its sign when the sliding dipole moment switches. This photo-magnetization can be detected by magneto-optical methods (such as Kerr or Faraday effect), which serves as an indicator of sliding ferroelectricity. Hence, one can use an all-optical pump and probe setup to measure and detect the subtle sliding ferroelectric phase.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2201.04367,
  title  = {Photo-magnetization in two-dimensional sliding ferroelectrics},
  author = {Jian Zhou},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2201.04367},
  year   = {2022}
}

Comments

6 figures, under peer review

R2 v1 2026-06-24T08:47:27.392Z