Abstract
A fundamental requirement for quantum technologies is the ability to coherently control the interaction between electrons and photons. However, in many scenarios involving the interaction between light and matter, the exchange of linear or angular momentum between electrons and photons is not feasible, a condition known as the dipole approximation limit. An example of a case beyond this limit that has remained experimentally elusive is when the interplay between chiral electrons and vortex light is considered, where the orbital angular momentum of light can be transferred to electrons. Here we present a mechanism for such an orbital angular momentum transfer from optical vortex beams to electronic quantum Hall states. Specifically, we identify a robust contribution to the radial photocurrent, in an annular graphene sample within the quantum Hall regime, that depends on the vorticity of light. This phenomenon can be interpreted as an optical pumping scheme, where the angular momentum of photons is transferred to electrons, generating a radial current, and the current direction is determined by the vorticity of the light. Our findings offer fundamental insights into the optical probing and manipulation of quantum coherence, with wide-ranging implications for advancing quantum coherent optoelectronics.
This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution
Access options
Access Nature and 54 other Nature Portfolio journals
Get Nature+, our best-value online-access subscription
$32.99 / 30 days
cancel any time
Subscribe to this journal
Receive 12 print issues and online access
$259.00 per year
only $21.58 per issue
Buy this article
- Purchase on SpringerLink
- Instant access to the full article PDF.
USD 39.95
Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout
Similar content being viewed by others
Data availability
All of the data that support the findings of this study are reported in the main text, Supplementary Information and Supplementary Video 1. Source data are available from the corresponding authors on reasonable request.
References
Bloch, J., Cavalleri, A., Galitski, V., Hafezi, M. & Rubio, A. Strongly correlated electron–photon systems. Nature 606, 41–48 (2022).
Basov, D., Fogler, M. & García de Abajo, F. Polaritons in van der Waals materials. Science 354, aag1992 (2016).
Schmiegelow, C. T. et al. Transfer of optical orbital angular momentum to a bound electron. Nat. Commun. 7, 12998 (2016).
Grass, T., Bhattacharya, U., Sell, J. & Hafezi, M. Two-dimensional excitons from twisted light and the fate of the photon’s orbital angular momentum. Phys. Rev. B 105, 205202 (2022).
Konzelmann, A. M., Krüger, S. O. & Giessen, H. Interaction of orbital angular momentum light with Rydberg excitons: modifying dipole selection rules. Phys. Rev. B 100, 115308 (2019).
Quinteiro, G. F. Below-bandgap excitation of bulk semiconductors by twisted light. Europhys. Lett. 91, 27002 (2010).
Andersen, M. et al. Quantized rotation of atoms from photons with orbital angular momentum. Phys. Rev. Lett. 97, 170406 (2006).
Boulier, T. et al. Injection of orbital angular momentum and storage of quantized vortices in polariton superfluids. Phys. Rev. Lett. 116, 116402 (2016).
Dominici, L. et al. Interactions and scattering of quantum vortices in a polariton fluid. Nat. Commun. 9, 1467 (2018).
Kwon, M.-S. et al. Direct transfer of light’s orbital angular momentum onto a nonresonantly excited polariton superfluid. Phys. Rev. Lett. 122, 045302 (2019).
Andersen, M. L., Stobbe, S., Sørensen, A. S. & Lodahl, P. Strongly modified plasmon–matter interaction with mesoscopic quantum emitters. Nat. Phys. 7, 215–218 (2011).
Rivera, N., Kaminer, I., Zhen, B., Joannopoulos, J. D. & Soljačić, M. Shrinking light to allow forbidden transitions on the atomic scale. Science 353, 263–269 (2016).
Wieck, A., Sigg, H. & Ploog, K. Observation of resonant photon drag in a two-dimensional electron gas. Phys. Rev. Lett. 64, 463 (1990).
Gullans, M. J., Taylor, J. M., Imamoğlu, A., Ghaemi, P. & Hafezi, M. High-order multipole radiation from quantum Hall states in Dirac materials. Phys. Rev. B 95, 235439 (2017).
Takahashi, H. T., Proskurin, I. & Kishine, J.-i Landau level spectroscopy by optical vortex beam. J. Phys. Soc. Jpn. 87, 113703 (2018).
Cao, B., Grass, T., Solomon, G. & Hafezi, M. Optical flux pump in the quantum Hall regime. Phys. Rev. B 103, L241301 (2021).
Hübener, H. et al. Engineering quantum materials with chiral optical cavities. Nat. Mater. 20, 438–442 (2021).
Suarez-Forero, D. G. et al. Spin-selective strong light–matter coupling in a 2D hole gas-microcavity system. Nat. Photon. 17, 912–916 (2023).
Ozawa, T. et al. Topological photonics. Rev. Mod. Phys. 91, 015006 (2019).
Lodahl, P. et al. Chiral quantum optics. Nature 541, 473–480 (2017).
Jalali Mehrabad, M., Mittal, S. & Hafezi, M. Topological photonics: fundamental concepts, recent developments, and future directions. Phys. Rev. A 108, 040101 (2023).
Allen, L., Barnett, S. M. & Padgett, M. J. Optical Angular Momentum (CRC Press, 2003).
Bliokh, K. Y. et al. Roadmap on structured waves. J. Opt. 25, 103001 (2023).
Rosen, G. F. Q., Tamborenea, P. I. & Kuhn, T. Interplay between optical vortices and condensed matter. Rev. Mod. Phys. 94, 035003 (2022).
Ji, Z. et al. Photocurrent detection of the orbital angular momentum of light. Science 368, 763–767 (2020).
Cohen-Tannoudji, C. & Kastler, A. in Progress in Optics Vol. 5, 1–81 (Elsevier, 1966).
Cao, B. et al. Chiral transport of hot carriers in graphene in the quantum Hall regime. ACS Nano 16, 18200–18209 (2022).
Feldman, B. E. et al. Observation of a nematic quantum Hall liquid on the surface of bismuth. Science 354, 316–321 (2016).
Scalari, G. et al. Ultrastrong coupling of the cyclotron transition of a 2D electron gas to a THz metamaterial. Science 335, 1323–1326 (2012).
Appugliese, F. et al. Breakdown of topological protection by cavity vacuum fields in the integer quantum Hall effect. Science 375, 1030–1034 (2022).
Grass, T. et al. Optical control over bulk excitations in fractional quantum Hall systems. Phys. Rev. B 98, 155124 (2018).
Knüppel, P. et al. Nonlinear optics in the fractional quantum Hall regime. Nature 572, 91–94 (2019).
Ivanov, P. A., Letscher, F., Simon, J. & Fleischhauer, M. Adiabatic flux insertion and growing of Laughlin states of cavity Rydberg polaritons. Phys. Rev. A 98, 013847 (2018).
Binanti, F., Goldman, N. & Repellin, C. Spectroscopy of edge and bulk collective modes in fractional Chern insulators. Phys. Rev. Research 6, L012054 (2024).
Winter, L. & Zilberberg, O. Fractional quantum Hall edge polaritons. Preprint at https://arxiv.org/abs/2308.12146 (2023).
Katan, Y. T. & Podolsky, D. Modulated Floquet topological insulators. Phys. Rev. Lett. 110, 016802 (2013).
Bhattacharya, U. et al. Fermionic Chern insulator from twisted light with linear polarization. Phys. Rev. B 105, L081406 (2022).
Kim, H., Dehghani, H., Ahmadabadi, I., Martin, I. & Hafezi, M. Floquet vortex states induced by light carrying an orbital angular momentum. Phys. Rev. B 105, L081301 (2022).
Bao, C., Tang, P., Sun, D. & Zhou, S. Light-induced emergent phenomena in 2D materials and topological materials. Nat. Rev. Phys. 4, 33–48 (2022).
But, D. et al. Suppressed Auger scattering and tunable light emission of Landau-quantized massless Kane electrons. Nat. Photon. 13, 783–787 (2019).
Zewail, A. H. Four-dimensional electron microscopy. Science 328, 187–193 (2010).
Watanabe, K., Taniguchi, T. & Kanda, H. Direct-bandgap properties and evidence for ultraviolet lasing of hexagonal boron nitride single crystal. Nat. Mater. 3, 404–409 (2004).
Pizzocchero, F. et al. The hot pick-up technique for batch assembly of van der Waals heterostructures. Nat. Commun. 7, 11894 (2016).
Jessen, B. S. et al. Lithographic band structure engineering of graphene. Nat. Nanotechnol. 14, 340–346 (2019).
Acknowledgements
The authors acknowledge fruitful discussions with C. Dean, A. Macdonald, I. Kaminer, I. Ahmadabadi, J. Shabani and P. Yu. This work was supported by AFOSR FA95502010223, ONR N00014-20-1-2325, ARO W911NF2010232, MURI FA9550-19-1-0399, FA9550-22-1-0339, NSF IMOD DMR-2019444, ARL W911NF1920181, Simons and Minta Martin foundations, and EU Horizon 2020 project Graphene Flagship Core 3 (grant agreement ID 881603). T.G. acknowledges financial support from the Agencia Estatal de Investigación (AEI) through Proyectos de Generación de Conocimiento PID2022-142308NA-I00 (EXQUSMI), and that this work has been produced with the support of a 2023 Leonardo Grant for Researchers in Physics, BBVA Foundation. The BBVA Foundation is not responsible for the opinions, comments and contents included in the project and/or the results derived therefrom, which are the total and absolute responsibility of the authors. The BBVA Foundation is not responsible for the opinions, comments and contents included in the project and/or the results derived therefrom, which are the total and absolute responsibility of the authors.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Contributions
D.S. and M.J.M. performed the experiments and analysed the data. N.P. and R.S. fabricated the graphene sample using hBN from K.W. and T.T. B.C., D.G.S.F., K.L., M.S.A. and G.S.S. contributed to building the measurement set-up and software used for measurements. B.C., M.H. and G.S.S. conceived the idea for the experiment. Theoretical analysis was performed by C.J.E., T.G. and J.S. The results were interpreted by D.S., M.J.M., N.S. and M.H. D.S., M.J.M. and M.H. wrote the paper with input from all authors.
Corresponding authors
Ethics declarations
Competing interests
The authors declare no competing interests.
Peer review
Peer review information
Nature Photonics thanks Ido Kaminer and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.
Additional information
Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Supplementary information
Supplementary Information
Supplementary Figs. 1–13, Sections 1–11 and discussion.
Supplementary Video 1
Illustrative schematic video describing the OAM pumping with vortex light.
Rights and permissions
Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.
About this article
Cite this article
Session, D., Jalali Mehrabad, M., Paithankar, N. et al. Optical pumping of electronic quantum Hall states with vortex light. Nat. Photon. 19, 156–161 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41566-024-01565-1
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Version of record:
Issue date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41566-024-01565-1
