A new paper published in Nature Physics shows that we can turn graphene into a Floquet insulator by focusing circularly polarized light onto it. This fundamentally changes the electrical properties of graphene: the material transforms from a (semi-)metal into an insulator as a band gap opens. What makes this Floquet insulator particularly interesting is that it is also topologically non-trivial. As a result, the electrons can behave in seemingly unusual ways. For example, a Hall voltage develops even in the absence of a magnetic field when we irradiate the light-dressed graphene with additional linearly polarized laser pulses – representing the first demonstration of a purely optical anomalous Hall effect. The original open-access publication is available here.
New Nature Physics Publication
