There is increasing interest in the study of chiral degrees of freedom occurring in matter and in electromagnetic fields. Opportunities in quantum sciences will likely exploit two main areas that are the focus of this Review: (1) recent observations of the chiral-induced spin selectivity (CISS) effect in chiral molecules and engineered nanomaterials and (2) rapidly evolving nanophotonic strategies designed to amplify chiral light–matter interactions. On the one hand, the CISS effect underpins the observation that charge transport through nanoscopic chiral structures favors a particular electronic spin orientation, resulting in large room-temperature spin polarizations. Observations of the CISS effect suggest opportunities for spin control and for the design and fabrication of room-temperature quantum devices from the bottom up, with atomic-scale precision and molecular modularity. On the other hand, chiral–optical effects that depend on both spin- and orbital-angular momentum of photons could offer key advantages in all-optical and quantum information technologies. In particular, amplification of these chiral light–matter interactions using rationally designed plasmonic and dielectric nanomaterials provide approaches to manipulate light intensity, polarization, and phase in confined nanoscale geometries. Any technology that relies on optimal charge transport, or optical control and readout, including quantum devices for logic, sensing, and storage, may benefit from chiral quantum properties. These properties can be theoretically and experimentally investigated from a quantum information perspective, which has not yet been fully developed. There are uncharted implications for the quantum sciences once chiral couplings can be engineered to control the storage, transduction, and manipulation of quantum information. This forward-looking Review provides a survey of the experimental and theoretical fundamentals of chiral-influenced quantum effects and presents a vision for their possible future roles in enabling room-temperature quantum technologies.

We discuss the Pauli Hamiltonian within a SU (2) gauge theory interpretation, where the gauge symmetry is broken. This interpretation carries directly over to the structural inversion asymmetric spin-orbit interactions in semiconductors and offers new insight into the problem of spin currents in the condensed matter environment. The central results is that symmetry breaking leads to zero spin conductivity in contrast to predictions of Gauge symmetric treatments. Computing the translation operator commutation relations comprising the simplest possible structural inversion asymmetry due to an external electric field, we derive a new condition for orbit quantization. The relation between the topological nature of this effect is consistent with our non-Abelian gauge symmetry breaking scenario.The role of spin-orbit interaction in condensed matter systems, be it of intrinsic or extrinsic sources, is of great interest due to its potential role in the generation of spin polarized currents, spin filters, spin accumulation [1], spin optics [2] and in general the quantum anomalous spin Hall effect in the absence of magnetic fields. Two generic kinds of systems have been studied for the possibility of spin currents: the first kind consists of partially filled bands (metallic) in three dimensional p-doped semiconductors [3] and two dimensional electron systems with Rashba type couplings [4]. Such systems exhibit spin currents that are specially sensible to disorder effects depending on the relative values of the spin orbit energy scale, and the energy scaleh/τ associated with the scattering time [5]. Other works have assessed that any weak disorder may destroy the Spin Hall Effect in the two dimensional Rashba model for infinite samples [6] [7]. The second kind of systems are topologically protected by band gap insulators, as in the integer quantum Hall effect [8] [9], which are robust against disorder as long as the gap is not destroyed or very small [10]. Sheng et al [11] recently established a relation between the IQSHE and topological Chern numbers characterizing the bulk states and the existence of edge states in graphene [12]. Although this scenario is promising, the value of the gap opened up by the SO interaction in graphene is quite small (10 −3 meV) so disorder is important. On the other hand, work by Murakami, Nagaosa and Zhang [9] studies a class of zero gap and narrow gap band insulators. The model assumes time reversal or space inversion symmetries and doubly degenerate parabolic bands close to the Fermi energy. Here the gap protecting against p-1

We study the photoinduced manipulation of charge carriers in monolayer silicene subject to intense electromagnetic terahertz radiation. Considering the Dirac cone approximation and going beyond the off-resonant condition for large frequencies of the radiation field, where only virtual photon processes are allowed, we present the exact zero-momentum pseudospin polarization and numerical results for the quasienergy band structure and time-averaged density of states. We find that resonant processes, due to real photon emission and absorbtion processes, induce a band inversion that qualitatively modifies the quasienergy spectrum. These band-structure changes manifest themselves as an inversion of the averaged pseudospin polarization. Through the analysis of the time-averaged density of states we find that effective photoinduced gap manipulation can only be achieved in the intermediate and strong matter-radiation coupling regime where the off-resonant approximation breaks down.

We study the role of periodically driven time-dependent Rashba spin-orbit coupling (RSOC) on a monolayer graphene sample. After recasting the originally 4 × 4 system of dynamical equations as two time-reversal related two-level problems, the quasienergy spectrum and the related dynamics are investigated via various techniques and approximations. In the static case, the system is gapped at the Dirac point. The rotating wave approximation (RWA) applied to the driven system unphysically preserves this feature, while the Magnus-Floquet approach as well as a numerically exact evaluation of the Floquet equation show that this gap is dynamically closed. In addition, a sizable oscillating pattern of the out-of-plane spin polarization is found in the driven case for states that are completely unpolarized in the static limit. Evaluation of the autocorrelation function shows that the original uniform interference pattern corresponding to time-independent RSOC gets distorted. The resulting structure can be qualitatively explained as a consequence of the transitions induced by the ac driving among the static eigenstates, i.e., these transitions modulate the relative phases that add up to give the quantum revivals of the autocorrelation function. Contrary to the static case, in the driven scenario, quantum revivals (suppressions) are correlated to spin-up (down) phases.