2022/03/19 by Pai, Yun-Yi, Marvinney, Claire E., Liang, Liangbo +12
#FOS: Physical sciences #Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall) #Other Condensed Matter (cond-mat.other) #Quantum Physics (quant-ph)
paper · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2203.13361
The notion that phonons can carry pseudo-angular momentum has become popular in the last decade, with recent research efforts highlighting phonon chirality, Berry curvature of phonon band structure, and the phonon Hall effect. When a phonon is resonantly coupled to a crystal electric field excitation, a so-called vibronic bound state forms. Here, we observe angular momentum transfer of δJz = ±1ℏ between phonons and an orbital state in a vibronic bound state of a candidate quantum spin liquid. This observation has profound implications for the engineering of phonon band structure topology through chiral quasiparticle interactions.