Chiral phonons in polar LiNbO<sub>3</sub>.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 41350259.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-025-66911-5 and PMC identifier 12780136.
- No licence information is recorded for this record.
- Because redistribution is not established, this page shows the abstract only. Follow the links below for the full text.
Abstract
Quasiparticles describe collective excitations in many-body systems, and their symmetry classification is of fundamental importance for physical processes such as excited states, transport phenomena, and phase transitions. Recent studies have introduced chirality as an additional degree of freedom in condensed matter physics, leading to a range of novel phenomena. Among these, chiral phonons are of special interest because they carry angular momentum and therefore intrinsically break time reversal symmetry, which non-trivially bridges the spin system with the lattice. Here, we directly prove the presence of chiral phonons in a prototypical polar LiNbO<sub>3</sub> crystal. Our demonstration of chiral phonons in a ferroelectric enables in-situ electrical control of momentum-dependent "magnetic" polarization with the reversible phonon handedness. This ferroic control of phonon chirality has substantial potential in the emerging field of chiral phononics, particularly along the associated control of its phonon angular momentum.