Study of chiral phonon induced electronic excitation in 2D materials

Abstract

In this thesis, we study the interaction between electrons and chiral phonons in the non-equilibrium regime, on honeycomb lattice models. To this end, we employ a real–space tight-binding model, and we model phonons as background lattice oscillations. The electron dynamics is studied using a non-equilibrium, linear–scaling method that can account for non-perturbative carrier dynamics. We first use the methodology to simulate a simpler optical phonon mode. Then, we examine the nature of the allowed transitions due to electron–chiral phonon interaction. Lastly, we show that, in contrast to the usual thought of the lattice as a spin sink, chiral phonons can produce a net spin-polarized excited electron density.