In many realistic topological materials, more than one kind of fermions contribute to the electronic bands crossing the Fermi level, leading to various novel phenomena. Here, using momentum-resolved inelastic electron scattering, we investigate the plasmons and their evolution across the phase transition in a type-II Weyl Semimetal MoTe$_2$, in which both Weyl fermions and trivial nonrelativistic fermions contribute to the Fermi surface in the Td phase. One plasmon mode in the 1T' phase at high temperature and two plasmon modes in the topological T$_d$ phase at low temperature are observed. Combining with first-priciples calculations, we show that all the plasmon modes are dominated by the interband correlations between the inverted bands of MoTe$_2$. Especially in the T$_d$ phase, since the electronic bands split due to inversion symmetry breaking and spin-orbit coupling, the plasmon modes manifest the interband correlation between the topological Weyl fermions and the trivial nonrelativistic electrons. Our work emphasizes the significance of the interplay between different kinds of carriers in plasmons of topological materials.
Flat bands in twisted moire superlattices support a variety of topological and strongly correlated phenomena along with easily tunable electrical and optical properties. Here, we demonstrate the existence of tunable, long-lived, and flat intraband and interband terahertz plasmons in twisted double bilayer graphene. We show that the interband plasmons originate from the presence of a Van Hove singularity in the joint density of states and a finite Berry connection between the pair of bands involved. We find that the gapped interband plasmon mode has a universal dispersion, and the plasmon gap i…
Molybdenum ditelluride, MoTe2, is a versatile material where the topological phase can be readily tuned by manipulating the associated structural phase transition. The fine details of the band structure of MoTe2, key to understanding its topological properties, have proven difficult to disentangle experientially due to the multi-band character of the material. Through experimental optical conductivity spectra, we detect two strong low-energy interband transitions. Both are linked to excitations between spin-orbit split bands. The lowest interband transition shows a strong thermal shift, pointi…
Twisted bilayer transition metal dichalcogenides are ideal platforms to study flat-band phenomena. In this paper, we investigate flat-band plasmons in the hole-doped twisted bilayer MoS$_2$ (tb-MoS$_2$) by employing a full tight-binding model and the random phase approximation. When considering lattice relaxations in tb-MoS$_2$, the flat band is not separated from remote valence bands, which makes the contribution of interband transitions in transforming the plasmon dispersion and energy significantly different. In particular, low-damped and quasi-flat plasmons emerge if we only consider intra…
Plasmons dispersion and nonvertical interband transitions in Bi2Se3 single crystals were investigated by electron energy-loss spectroscopy in conjunction with (scanning) transmission electron microscopy, (S)TEM-EELS. Both volume plasmons (π plasmon at 7 eV and π+σ plasmon at 17 eV) and surface plasmons (~5.5 and 10 eV) were demonstrated in STEM-EELS spectra and the corresponding spectral imaging in real space. In the further EELS experiments in reciprocal space, the momentum-dependent spectra reveal very different dispersion behavior between π and π+σ plasmons, with π+σ plasmons showing a typi…
We use the tight-binding model and the random-phase approximation to investigate the intrinsic plasmon in silicene. At finite temperatures, an undamped plasmon is generated from the interplay between the intraband and the interband-gap transitions. The extent of the plasmon existence range in terms of momentum and temperature, which is dependent on the size of single-particle-excitation gap, is further tuned by applying a perpendicular electric field. The plasmon becomes damped in the interband-excitation region. A low damped zone is created by the field-induced spin split. The field-dependent…
Hot electrons generated from the decay of localized surface plasmons in metallic nanostructures have the potential to transform photocatalysis, photodetection and other optoelectronic applications. However, the understanding of hot-carrier generation in realistic nanostructures, in particular the relative importance of interband and intraband transitions, remains incomplete. Here we report theoretical predictions of hot-carrier generation rates in spherical nanoparticles of the noble metals silver, gold and copper with diameters up to 30 nanometers obtained from a novel atomistic linear-scalin…
First-principles calculations of the conventional and acoustic surface plasmons (CSPs and ASPs) on the (111) surfaces of Cu, Ag, and Au are presented. The effect of $s-d$ interband transitions on both types of plasmons is investigated by comparing results from the local density approximation and an orbital dependent exchange-correlation (xc) potential that improves the position and width of the $d$ bands. The plasmon dispersions calculated with the latter xc-potential agree well with electron energy loss spectroscopy (EELS) experiments. For both the CSP and ASP, the same trend of Cu$<$Au$<$Ag …
Naturally occurring hyperbolic plasmonic media is rare, and was only recently observed in the 1T$'$ phase of WTe$_2$. We elucidate on the physical origin of this strong infrared hyperbolic response, and attribute it to band-nested anisotropic interband transitions. Such phenomenon does not occur in general anisotropic materials, at least not in their pristine state. However, band-nested anisotropic interband transitions can in principle be induced via proper electronic band nesting. We illustrate this principle and demonstrate a topological elliptic-to-hyperbolic transition in MoTe$_2$ via str…
Silicene, the two-dimensional allotrope of silicon, is predicted to exist in a low-buckled honeycomb lattice, characterized by semimetallic electronic bands with graphenelike energy-momentum dispersions around the Fermi level (represented by touching Dirac cones). Single layers of silicene are mostly synthesized by depositing silicon on top of silver, where, however, the different phases observed to date are so strongly hybridized with the substrate that not only the Dirac cones, but also the whole valence and conduction states of ideal silicene appear to be lost. Here, we provide evidence tha…
The carrier dynamics and electronic structures of type-II Weyl semimetal candidates MoTe$_2$ and WTe$_2$ have been investigated by using temperature-dependent optical conductivity [$σ(ω)$] spectra. Two kinds of Drude peaks (narrow and broad) have been separately observed. The width of the broad Drude peak increases with elevating temperature above the Debye temperature of about 130 K in the same way as those of normal metals, on the other hand, the narrow Drude peak becomes visible below 80 K and the width is rapidly suppressed with decreasing temperature. Because the temperature dependence of…
We present an ab-initio study of the electronic response function of sodium in its 5 known metallic phases from 0 to 180 GPa at room temperature. The considered formalism is based on a interpolation scheme within time-dependent density functional theory that uses maximally localized Wannier functions, providing an accurate sampling of the reciprocal space. Besides showing an excellent agreement with inelastic X-ray scattering experiments, our calculations reveal that the drastic decrease of the optical reflectivity recently measured in the high pressure phases oP8 and tI19 is associated to a n…
The interband pi and pi+sigma plasmons in pristine graphene and the Dirac plasmon in doped graphene are not applicable, since they are broad or weak, and weakly couple to an external longitudinal or electromagnetic probe. Therefore, the ab initio Density Function Theory is used to demonstrate that the chemical doping of the graphene by the alkali or alkaline earth atoms dramatically changes the poor graphene excitation spectrum in the ultra-violet frequency range (4 - 10 eV). Four prominent modes are detected. Two of them are the intra-layer plasmons with the square-root dispersion, characteri…
The plasmon excitations in proposed single- and double-component helical liquid (HL) models are investigated within the random-phase approximation, by calculating the density-density, spin-density and spin-spin waves. The effect due to broken time-reversal symmetry on intraband-plasmon dispersion relation in the single-component HL system is analyzed and compared to those of well-known cases, such as conventional quasi-one-dimensional electron gases and armchair graphene nanoribbons. The equivalence between the density-density wave in the single-component HL to the coupled spin-density and den…
Photoresponse of Au nanoparticle functionalized semiconducting GaN (Au-GaN) nanowires is reported for an optical switching using 532 excitation. Wide band gap GaN nanowires are grown by catalyst assisted chemical vapour deposition technique and functionalized with Au in the chemical route. Au-GaN nanowires show surface plasmon resonance (SPR) mode of Au nanoclusters around 550 nm along with characteristic band for GaN around 365 nm. An optical switching is observed for Au-GaN nanowires with a sub-band gap excitation of 532 nm suggesting possible role of surface plasmon polariton assisted trans…
The development of nanoplasmonic devices, such as plasmonic circuits and metamaterial superlenses in the visible to ultraviolet frequency range, is hampered by the lack of low-loss plasmonic media. Recently, strong plasmonic response was reported in a certain class of topological insulators. Here, we present a first-principles density functional theory analysis of the dielectric functions of topologically insulating quaternary (Bi,Sb)2(Te,Se)3 trichalcogenide compounds. Bulk plasmonic properties, dominated by interband transitions, are observed from 2-3 eV and extend to higher frequencies. Mor…
Plasmonics in topological semimetals offers exciting opportunities for fundamental physics exploration as well as for technological applications. Here, we investigate plasmons in the exemplar chiral crystal CoSi, which hosts a variety of multifold fermionic excitations. We show that CoSi hosts two distinct plasmon modes in the infrared regime at 0.1 eV and 1.1 eV in the long-wavelength limit. The 0.1 eV plasmon is found to be highly dispersive, and originates from intraband collective oscillations associated with a double spin-1 excitation, while the 1.1 eV plasmon is dispersionless and it inv…
Two-particle spectroscopy with correlated electron pairs is used to establish the causal link between the secondary electron spectrum, the $(π+σ)-$plasmon peak and the unoccupied band structure of highly oriented pyrolitic graphite. The plasmon spectrum is resolved with respect to the involved interband transitions and clearly exhibits final state effects, in particular due to the energy gap between the interlayer resonances along the $Γ$A-direction. The corresponding final state effects can also be identified in the secondary electron spectrum. Interpretation of the results is performed on th…
Recent experimental and theoretical investigations demonstrate that twisted trilayer graphene (tTLG) is a highly tunable platform to study the correlated insulating states, ferromagnetism, and superconducting properties. Here we explore the possibility of tuning electronic correlations of the tTLG via a vertical pressure. A full tight-binding model is used to accurately describe the pressure-dependent interlayer interactions. Our results show that pressure can push a relatively larger twist angle (for instance, $1.89^{\circ}$) tTLG to reach the flat-band regime. Next, we obtain the relationshi…
A survey is presented of current investigations of the impact of band structure effects on various aspects of the interaction of charged particles with real solids. The role that interband transitions play in the decay mechanism of bulk plasmons is addressed, and results for plasmon linewidths in Al and Si are discussed. {\it Ab initio} calculations of the electronic energy loss of ions moving in Al and Si are also presented, within linear response theory, from a realistic description of the one-electron band structure and a full treatment of the dynamic electronic response of valence electron…
We investigate the charge excitations of a Weyl semimetal in the axionic charge density wave (axionic CDW) state. While it has been shown that the topological response (anomalous Hall conductivity) is protected against the CDW state, we find that the long wavelength plasmon excitation is radically influenced by the dynamics of the CDW order parameter. In the normal state, we show that an undamped collective mode should exist at q~Q_(CDW) if there is an attractive interaction favoring the formation of the CDW state. The undamped nature of this collective mode is attributed to a gap-like feature…
Highly mismatched alloys (HMAs) have band structures strongly modified due to the introduction of the alloying element. We consider HMAs where the isolated state of the alloying element is near the host conduction band, which causes the conduction band to split into two bands. We determine the bulk plasma frequency when the lower-energy band is partially occupied, as by doping, using a semi-analytical method based on a disorder-averaged Green's function. We include the nontrivial effects of interband transitions to the higher-energy band, which limit the plasma frequency to be less than an eff…
