journal article·2026-05-04

Observation of coherent ferron emission and propagation

Jeongheon Choe, Taketo Handa, Chun-Ying Huang, André Koch Liston, Jordan Cox, Jonathan Stensberg, Yongseok Hong, Daniel G. Chica, Ding Xu, Fuyang Tay, Samra Husremovic, Vinicius da Silveira Lanza Avelar, Eric A. Arsenault, Zhuquan Zhang, James McIver, Dmitri N. Basov, Milan Delor, Xavier Roy, X.-Y. Zhu

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Abstract

Ordered phases give rise to collective modes and quasiparticles, such as spin waves and magnons emerging from magnetic order. Extending this paradigm to ferroelectrics suggests the existence of polarization waves and their fundamental quanta, ferrons. A coherent ferron-that is, a polarization wave-modulates the magnitude of the electric polarization and is thus an amplitude (Higgs) mode of the ferroelectric order. Here we observe coherent ferrons from the pulsed laser excitation of van der Waals ferroelectrics, NbOI2 and WO2Br2. We demonstrate two complementary manifestations of coherent ferrons: intense narrow-band terahertz emission at the ferroelectric transverse optical phonon frequency, and uniaxial propagation along the polar axis as hyperbolic phonon polaritons with exceptionally long coherence times. These long-lived, uniaxial and dipole-carrying polarization waves may find applications in narrow-band terahertz emission, ferronic information processing and coherent electric control.
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Research context

OpenAlex topics: Quantum optics and atomic interactions · Laser-Matter Interactions and Applications · Plasmonic and Surface Plasmon Research

SciVX discovery tags are terminology-based. OpenAlex topics are source-provided classifications.

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