Published July 1, 2022 | Version v1
Journal article Open

Switchable chiral transport in charge-ordered Kagome CsV3Sb5

  • 1. Laboratory of Quantum Materials (QMAT), Institute of Materials (IMX), E´cole Polytechnique Fe´de´rale de Lausanne (EPFL), CH-1015 Lausanne, Switzerland
  • 2. Max Planck Institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter, 22761 Hamburg, Germany
  • 3. Centro de F´ısica de Materiales (CSIC-UPV/EHU), 20018 Donostia-San Sebastian, Spain
  • 4. Max Planck Institute for Chemical Physics of Solids, 01187 Dresden, Germany
  • 5. Donostia International Physics Center, 20018 Donostia-San Sebastian, Spain
  • 6. Department of Physics, University of Z¨urich, Winterthurerstrasse 190, CH-8057 Z¨urich, Switzerland

Description

When electric conductors differ from their mirror image, unusual chiral transport coefficients appear that are forbidden in achiral metals, such as a non-linear electric response known as electronic magneto-chiral anisotropy (eMChA). While chiral transport signatures are by symmetry allowed in many conductors without a center of inversion,  it reaches appreciable levels only in rare cases when an exceptionally strong chiral coupling to the itinerant electrons is present. So far, observations of chiral transport have been limited to materials in which the atomic positions strongly break mirror symmetries. Here, we report chiral transport in the centro-symmetric layered Kagome metal CsV3Sb5, observed via second harmonic generation under in-plane magnetic field. The eMChA signal becomes significant only at temperatures below T'~ 35 K, deep within the charge ordered state of CsV3Sb5 (TCDW ~ 94 K). This temperature dependence reveals a direct correspondence between electronic chirality, unidirectional charge order, and spontaneous time-reversal-symmetry breaking due to putative orbital loop currents. We show that the chirality is set by the out-of-plane field component and that a transition from left- to right-handed transport can be induced by changing the field sign. CsV3Sb5 is the first material in which strong chiral transport can be controlled and switched by small magnetic-field changes, in stark contrast to structurally chiral materials -- a prerequisite for their applications in chiral electronics.

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