Optical manipulation of the topological phase in ZrTe5 revealed by time- and angle-resolved photoemission

• DOI: 10.1088/1674-1056/ad0d9d
• Publication Date: 2023-11-17T08:20:40Z
• Authors: Chaozhi 超之 Huang 黄; Chengyang 骋洋 Xu 徐; Fengfeng 锋锋 Zhu 朱; Shaofeng 绍峰 Duan 段; Jianzhe 见喆 Liu 刘; Lingxiao 凌霄 Gu 顾; Shichong 石崇 Wang 王; Haoran 浩然 Liu 刘; Dong 冬 Qian 钱; Weidong 卫东 Luo 罗; Wentao 文涛 Zhang 张
• Keywords: Inverse photoemission spectroscopy

High-resolution time- and angle-resolved photoemission measurements were conducted on the topological insulator ZrTe5. With strong femtosecond photoexcitation, a possible ultrafast phase transition from weak to insulating was experimentally realized by recovering energy gap inversion in time scale that shorter than 0.15 ps. This photoinduced transient can last longer 2 ps at highest excitation fluence studied, it cannot be attributed heating of electrons or modification conduction band filling. Additionally, measured unoccupied electronic states are consistent with first-principles calculation based experimental crystal lattice constants, which favor phase. These findings provide new insights into longstanding controversy about properties ZrTe5, they suggest many-body effects including electron-electron interactions must taken account understand equilibrium