Magnetic brightening and nanoscale imaging of spin-polarized helical edge modes in ZrTe₅.

Authors

Samuel Haeuser, Richard H J Kim, Lin-Lin Wang, Thomas Koschny, Pedro M Lozano, Genda Gu, Randall K Chan, Joong-Mok Park, Martin Mootz, Liang Luo, Qiang Li, Jigang Wang

Published in

Nature nanotechnology. Jul 23, 2026. Epub Jul 23, 2026.

Abstract

Efficient charge transport remains a fundamental challenge for nanoelectronic devices, as their performance is constrained by high dissipation and the impedance mismatch between high-frequency signal sources and nanoscale circuit interfaces. Although topologically protected helical edge modes offer a dissipationless and backscattering-resilient alternative, achieving nanoscale control over these modes requires direct visualization of their spatial electrodynamics, especially under high-frequency operation. Here, by utilizing cryogenic magneto-infrared scattering-type scanning near-field optical microscopy (cm-IR-sSNOM), we image spin-polarized helical edge channels in ZrTe₅ at the nanoscale, revealing magnetic-field-induced brightening as a high-frequency electrodynamic signature of robust topological edge modes. Operating at 1.8 K and under a magnetic field of up to 5 T, we observe the emergence of edge-state polarizability at infrared frequencies that is notably resilient to the magnetic gaps that typically quench d.c. and microwave edge transport. Our results reveal a topological 'two-lane' spatial reorganization in which an external magnetic field induces a spin-population imbalance between counterpropagating edge modes. Favoured helical branches are confined against physical boundaries to activate a net infrared near-field contrast. This electrodynamic response scales linearly with the number of atomic layers, which confirms that individual layers in ZrTe₅ preserve their discrete quantum spin Hall identities. These findings may be useful for developing topological spintronic devices, as the magnetic infrared tunability of helical edge channels provides a pathway for low-loss nanoscale interconnects and high-speed information processing.

PMID:
42493627
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 24 Jul 2026.

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