Paper detail

Intra-cell dynamics and cyclotron motion without magnetic field

Intra-cell motion endows rich non-trivial phenomena to a wide variety of quantum materials. The most prominent example is a transverse current in the absence of a magnetic field (i.e. the anomalous Hall effect). Here we show that, in addition to a dc Hall effect, anomalous Hall materials possess circulating currents and cyclotron motion without magnetic field. These are generated from the intricate wavefunction dynamics within the unit cell, and correspond to interband transitions (coherences) in much the same way that cyclotron resonances arise from inter-Landau level transitions in magneto-optics. Curiously, anomalous cyclotron motion exhibits an intrinsic decay in time (even in pristine materials) displaying a characteristic power law decay. This reveals an intrinsic dephasing similar to that of inhomogeneous broadening of spinors. Circulating currents can manifest as the emission of circularly polarized light pulses in response to incident linearly polarized (pulsed) electric field, and provide a direct means of interrogating the intra-unit-cell dynamics of quantum materials.