Topological Materials and Phenomena · Lab experiment

Can laser light steer electrons in graphene?

Paper: Optical control of electrons in a Floquet topological insulator
Lesko et al. · Nature Physics 2026 · doi.org/10.1038/s41567-026-03429-7

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Can laser light steer electrons in graphene? Circularly polarized laser pulses turned graphene into a light-dressed topological state. Flipping the handedness of a second laser colour cut the current nearly a hundredfold. Shifting the two-colour phase reversed the current direction.

AI-assisted summary with an AI voice, not reviewed by the authors. Made from the paper under its CC BY licence. Read the paper before relying on a finding. Keywords: Floquet topological insulators, monolayer graphene, femtosecond pulses, circularly polarized light, topological electronics.