Abstract
Abstract Topological optics is an emerging research area in which various topological and geometrical ideas are being proposed to design and manipulate the behaviors of photons. Here, the photonic spin Hall effect on the surfaces of topological Weyl semimetal (WSM) films was studied. Our results show that the spin-dependent splitting (i.e. photonic spin Hall shifts) induced by the spin-orbit interaction is little sensitive to the tilt αt of Weyl nodes and the chemical potential μ in type-I WSM film. In contrast, photonic spin Hall shifts in both the in-plane and transverse directions present versatile dependent behaviors on the αt and μ in type-II WSM film. In particular, the largest in-plane and transverse spin Hall shifts appear at the tilts between −2 and −3, which are ~40 and ~10 times of the incident wavelength, respectively. Nevertheless, the largest spin Hall shifts for type-II WSM film with positive αt are only several times of incident wavelength. Moreover, the photonic spin Hall shifts also exhibit different variation trends with decreasing the chemical potential for different signs of αt in type-II WSM films. This dependence of photonic spin Hall shifts on tilt orientation in type-II WSM films has been explained by time-reversal-symmetry-breaking Hall conductivities in WSMs.
Highlights
Weyl semimetals (WSMs) are the topological phases with broken time-reversal or space-inversion symmetry, whose electronic structure is composed of pairs of Weyl nodes with opposite chirality [1, 2]
Our results show that the spin-dependent splitting induced by the spinorbit interaction is little sensitive to the tilt αt of Weyl nodes and the chemical potential μ in type-I WSM film
The spin-dependent splitting induced by the spin-orbit interaction is investigated in detail, when one linearly polarized light is incident upon the WSM surface without Fermi arc states
Summary
Weyl semimetals (WSMs) are the topological phases with broken time-reversal or space-inversion symmetry, whose electronic structure is composed of pairs of Weyl nodes with opposite chirality [1, 2] They are a prototypical representative of the gapless topological materials, and have been experimentally discovered in three-dimensional condensed matters including MoTe2, WTe2, NbAs, TaP, TaAs, and so forth [3,4,5,6]. Ideal type-I Weyl points with symmetric cone spectra have been ascertained in available semimetals (e.g. NbAs, TaP, TaAs) and in artificial photonic crystal structures [4,5,6, 14,15,16] It was not until 2015 that the concept of type-II WSMs was theoretically proposed by studying the topological properties of WTe2 and MoTe2 [13, 17]. This work may provide one new strategy to distinguish the topological phases in WSMs
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