Chern insulator optics

Abstract

Chern insulators have optical properties that are strikingly different than ordinary chiral media. Unlike the natural optical activity of the latter, which is a finite-wavelength effect arising from spatial dispersion, the optical activity of a Chern insulator is already present in the long-wavelength limit, and exhibits a striking directional asymmetry in the propagation of circularly polarized light. We study this unnatural optical activity using a recently developed field theory for Chern insulators. For bulk Chern insulators, we derive the normal-incidence transmission and reflection coefficients of multilayer structures, identify the associated Faraday and Kerr angles, and show that these optical rotations provide a direct optical signature of topology at low frequencies. We also show that an interface between bulk Chern insulators can act as a kind of mirror, completely reflecting light at normal incidence when the Chern invariants have opposite signs. Moving to a more realistic model of a two-dimensional current sheet, we study the Faraday and Kerr effects in a thin film of $\mathrm{Mn}\mathrm{Bi}_2\mathrm{Te}_4$ in its Chern insulator phase. The predicted rotations are many orders of magnitude larger than those of optically active media of comparable thickness that are topologically trivial.