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Topology-protected surface transport of ultimate thinness in three-dimensional topological insulators (TIs) is breaking new ground in quantum science and technology. Yet a challenge remains on how to disentangle and selectively control surface helical spin transport from the bulk contribution. Here we use the mid-infrared and terahertz (THz) photoexcitation of exclusive intraband transitions to enable ultrafast manipulation of surface THz conductivity in Bi2Se3. The unique, transient electronic state is characterized by frequency-dependent carrier relaxations that directly distinguish the faster surface channel than the bulk with no complication from interband excitations or need for reduced bulk doping. We determine the topological enhancement ratio between bulk and surface scattering rates, i.e., γBS/γSS ~3.80 in equilibrium. The ultra-broadband, wavelength-selective pumping may be applied to emerging topological semimetals for separation and control of the protected transport connected with the Weyl nodes from other bulk bands.

Interacting many-body systems are characterized by stable configurations of objects--ranging from elementary particles to cosmological formations--that also act as building blocks for more complicated structures. It is often possible to incorporate interactions in theoretical treatments of crystalline solids by introducing suitable quasiparticles that have an effective mass, spin or charge which in turn affects the material's conductivity, optical response or phase transitions. Additional quasiparticle interactions may also create strongly correlated configurations yielding new macroscopic phenomena, such as the emergence of a Mott insulator, superconductivity or the pseudogap phase of high-temperature superconductors. In semiconductors, a conduction-band electron attracts a valence-band hole (electronic vacancy) to create a bound pair, known as an exciton, which is yet another quasiparticle. Two excitons may also bind together to give molecules, often referred to as biexcitons, and even polyexcitons may exist. In indirect-gap semiconductors such as germanium or silicon, a thermodynamic phase transition may produce electron-hole droplets whose diameter can approach the micrometre range. In direct-gap semiconductors such as gallium arsenide, the exciton lifetime is too short for such a thermodynamic process. Instead, different quasiparticle configurations are stabilized dominantly by many-body interactions, not by thermalization. The resulting non-equilibrium quantum kinetics is so complicated that stable aggregates containing three or more Coulomb-correlated electron-hole pairs remain mostly unexplored. Here we study such complex aggregates and identify a new stable configuration of charged particles that we call a quantum droplet. This configuration exists in a plasma and exhibits quantization owing to its small size. It is charge neutral and contains a small number of particles with a pair-correlation function that is characteristic of a liquid. We present experimental and theoretical evidence for the existence of quantum droplets in an electron-hole plasma created in a gallium arsenide quantum well by ultrashort optical pulses.

'Sudden' quantum quench and prethermalization have become a cross-cutting theme for discovering emergent states of matter. Yet this remains challenging in electron matter, especially superconductors. The grand question of what is hidden underneath superconductivity (SC) appears universal, but poorly understood. Here we reveal a long-lived gapless quantum phase of prethermalized quasiparticles (QPs) after a single-cycle terahertz (THz) quench of a NbSn SC gap. Its conductivity spectra is characterized by a sharp coherent peak and a vanishing scattering rate that decreases almost linearly towards zero frequency, which is most pronounced around the full depletion of the condensate and absent for a high-frequency pump. Above a critical pump threshold, such a QP phase with coherent transport and memory persists as an unusual prethermalization plateau, without relaxation to normal and SC thermal states for an order of magnitude longer than the QP recombination and thermalization times. Switching to this metastable 'quantum QP fluid' signals non-thermal quench of coupled SC and charge-density-wave (CDW)-like orders and hints quantum control beneath the SC.

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