Abstract:

In this talk, I will survey my past and ongoing work on chirality and optical response in correlated quantum materials. I will discuss complementary approaches from both the bulk and the boundary. From the bulk perspective, I will begin with layered materials, such as van der Waals materials, and show how gyrotropic optical rotation can quantitatively read out the chirality of the layered structure. I will also briefly discuss how collective exciton optics can reveal correlated electronic order, and how related correlated phases can give rise to unconventional higher-charge superconductivity. Bulk–boundary correspondence provides a complementary perspective. In chiral spin liquids, we determine the microscopic profiles of domain walls between opposite chiralities and uncover an emergent geometric description of their fluctuations. For fractional Chern insulator edges, we show how the microscopic lattice modifies time-dependent correlations over experimentally relevant time scales, while interactions suppress these corrections at longer times. We further propose time-resolved optical spectroscopy as a probe of edge correlations and chiral propagation in charge-neutral fractional Chern insulators, where conventional electronic transport is difficult.