Peng Suo, Wei Xia, Wenjie Zhang, Xiaoqing Zhu, Jibo Fu, Xian Lin, Zuanming Jin, Weimin Liu, Yanfeng Guo, Guohong Ma
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/lpor.202000025
The van der Waals magnet CrSiTe3 (CST) has captured immense interest because it is capable of retaining the long‐range ferromagnetic order even in its monolayer form, thus offering potential use in spintronic devices. Bulk CST crystal has inversion symmetry that is broken on the crystal surface. Here, by employing ultrafast terahertz (THz) emission spectroscopy and time resolved THz spectroscopy, the THz emission of the CST crystal is investigated, which shows a strong THz emission from the crystal surface under femtosecond (fs) pulse excitation at 800 nm. Theoretical analysis based on space symmetry of CST suggests the dominant role of shift current occurring on the surface with a thickness of a few quintuple layers in producing the THz emission, consistent with the experimental observation that the emitted THz amplitude strongly depends on the azimuthal and pumping polarization angles. This study offers a new efficient THz emitter as well as a better understanding of the nonlinear optical response of CST. It hopefully will open a window toward the investigation on the nonlinear optical response in the mono/few‐layer van der Waals crystals with low‐dimensional magnetism.
