Terahertz-induced acceleration of massive Dirac electrons in semimetal bismuth

Dirac-like electrons in solid state have been of great interest since they exhibit many peculiar physical behaviors analogous to relativistic mechanics. Among them, carriers in graphene and surface states of topological insulators are known to behave as massless Dirac fermions with a conical band st...

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Main Authors:	Minami, Yasuo, Araki, Kotaro, Dao, Thang Duy, Nagao, Tadaaki, Kitajima, Masahiro, Takeda, Jun, Katayama, Ikufumi
Format:	Online
Language:	English
Published:	Nature Publishing Group 2015
Online Access:	https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4629143/

id	pubmed-4629143
recordtype	oai_dc
spelling	pubmed-46291432015-11-05 Terahertz-induced acceleration of massive Dirac electrons in semimetal bismuth Minami, Yasuo Araki, Kotaro Dao, Thang Duy Nagao, Tadaaki Kitajima, Masahiro Takeda, Jun Katayama, Ikufumi Article Dirac-like electrons in solid state have been of great interest since they exhibit many peculiar physical behaviors analogous to relativistic mechanics. Among them, carriers in graphene and surface states of topological insulators are known to behave as massless Dirac fermions with a conical band structure in the two-dimensional momentum space, whereas electrons in semimetal bismuth (Bi) are expected to behave as massive Dirac-like fermions in the three-dimensional momentum space, whose dynamics is of particular interest in comparison with that of the massless Dirac fermions. Here, we demonstrate that an intense terahertz electric field transient accelerates the massive Dirac-like fermions in Bi from classical Newtonian to the relativistic regime; the electrons are accelerated approaching the effective “speed of light” with the “relativistic” beta β = 0.89 along the asymptotic linear band structure. As a result, the effective electron mass is enhanced by a factor of 2.4. Nature Publishing Group 2015-11-02 /pmc/articles/PMC4629143/ /pubmed/26522668 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep15870 Text en Copyright © 2015, Macmillan Publishers Limited http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in the credit line; if the material is not included under the Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission from the license holder to reproduce the material. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
repository_type	Open Access Journal
institution_category	Foreign Institution
institution	US National Center for Biotechnology Information
building	NCBI PubMed
collection	Online Access
language	English
format	Online
author	Minami, Yasuo Araki, Kotaro Dao, Thang Duy Nagao, Tadaaki Kitajima, Masahiro Takeda, Jun Katayama, Ikufumi
spellingShingle	Minami, Yasuo Araki, Kotaro Dao, Thang Duy Nagao, Tadaaki Kitajima, Masahiro Takeda, Jun Katayama, Ikufumi Terahertz-induced acceleration of massive Dirac electrons in semimetal bismuth
author_facet	Minami, Yasuo Araki, Kotaro Dao, Thang Duy Nagao, Tadaaki Kitajima, Masahiro Takeda, Jun Katayama, Ikufumi
author_sort	Minami, Yasuo
title	Terahertz-induced acceleration of massive Dirac electrons in semimetal bismuth
title_short	Terahertz-induced acceleration of massive Dirac electrons in semimetal bismuth
title_full	Terahertz-induced acceleration of massive Dirac electrons in semimetal bismuth
title_fullStr	Terahertz-induced acceleration of massive Dirac electrons in semimetal bismuth
title_full_unstemmed	Terahertz-induced acceleration of massive Dirac electrons in semimetal bismuth
title_sort	terahertz-induced acceleration of massive dirac electrons in semimetal bismuth
description	Dirac-like electrons in solid state have been of great interest since they exhibit many peculiar physical behaviors analogous to relativistic mechanics. Among them, carriers in graphene and surface states of topological insulators are known to behave as massless Dirac fermions with a conical band structure in the two-dimensional momentum space, whereas electrons in semimetal bismuth (Bi) are expected to behave as massive Dirac-like fermions in the three-dimensional momentum space, whose dynamics is of particular interest in comparison with that of the massless Dirac fermions. Here, we demonstrate that an intense terahertz electric field transient accelerates the massive Dirac-like fermions in Bi from classical Newtonian to the relativistic regime; the electrons are accelerated approaching the effective “speed of light” with the “relativistic” beta β = 0.89 along the asymptotic linear band structure. As a result, the effective electron mass is enhanced by a factor of 2.4.
publisher	Nature Publishing Group
publishDate	2015
url	https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4629143/
_version_	1613495974932512768

Terahertz-induced acceleration of massive Dirac electrons in semimetal bismuth

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