Optical signatures of bulk g-wave altermagnetism in MnTe

Abstract

In planar altermagnets, optical excitation by linearly polarized ultrashort pulses can induce spin polarizations in the electronic excited states in a controlled fashion, even though the material is magnetically compensated. Here, we theoretically analyze the response of the prototypical bulk g-wave altermagnet $\alpha$-MnTe to polarized ultrashort pulses. By calculating the excited electron distributions based on ab-initio band structure data, we show how this excited electronic spin response in $\alpha$-MnTe exhibits different symmetries which are determined by the nodal planes intrinsic to the bulk g-wave altermagnet. We present a simple procedure to obtain the symmetry of the electronic spin response from the two-dimensional cuts through the three-dimensional band structure.