Light-induced valley polarization in interacting and nonlinear Weyl semimetals

Abstract

It has been recently predicted that the interplay between Coulomb interactions and Berry curvature can produce interesting optical phenomena in topologically nontrivial two-dimensional insulators. Here, we present a theory of the interband optical absorption for three-dimensional, doped Weyl semimetals. We find that the Berry curvature, Coulomb interactions, and the nonlinearity in the single-particle energy spectrum can together enable a light-induced valley polarization. We support and supplement our numerical results with an analytical toy model calculation, which unveils topologically nontrivial Mahan excitons with nonzero vorticity.