Light-induced orbital magnetism in metals via inverse Faraday effect
Priya Sharma, Alexander V. Balatsky
Abstract
We present a microscopic calculation of the inverse Faraday effect in metals. We derive a static local magnetic moment induced on the application of high-frequency light, using the Eilenberger formulation of quasiclassical theory. We include the effect of disorder and formulate a theory applicable across the entire temperature range, in the absence of external applied fields. For light-induced electric fields of amplitude <a:math xmlns:a="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <a:mrow> <a:mo>∼</a:mo> <a:mn>100</a:mn> <a:mspace width="0.16em"/> <a:mtext>kV/cm</a:mtext> </a:mrow> </a:math> , the induced fields are large <c:math xmlns:c="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <c:mrow> <c:mo>∼</c:mo> <c:mn>0.1</c:mn> <c:mspace width="0.16em"/> <c:mtext>T</c:mtext> </c:mrow> </c:math> for metallic Nb. The predictions of our theory agree with recent experimental and theoretical results [O. H.-C. Cheng , and J. Hurst , ]. An extension of this approach to superconductors would open a new route of inducing orbital magnetic field and potentially vortices in superconductors. Published by the American Physical Society 2024