Ultrafast optical control of topological invariants in 2D materials

PhD Candidate, Monash University

We reported the effort of using high electric field, ultrashort femtosecond pulses of light to control and reversibly alter the topological invariants, i.e. from a topologically trivial to a nontrivial state and vice versa, of the Dirac semimetal, namely graphene, and probing that topological phase transition via terahertz time-domain spectroscopy.

About the presenter

Phat Tan Nguyen is a PhD student working under the supervision of Dr Agustin Schiffrin and Dr Gary Beane at Monash University, where he is investigating optically-driven topological phases of matter using terahertz time-domain spectroscopy and pump-probe spectroscopy with sub-picosecond time resolution, and at the scale of a single atom. He is mainly involved in Research theme 1: topological materials and Research theme 3: light-transformed materials.