Spontaneous out-of-equilibrium plasmonic magnetism in van der Waals materials

Spontaneous symmetry breaking lies at the heart of the description of interacting phases of matter. We will argue that a driven interacting system subject to a linearly polarized (achiral) driving field can spontaneously magnetize (acquire chirality). In particular, we find when a metal (such as graphene) is driven close to its plasmon resonance, it hosts strong internal ac fields that enable Berryogenesis: the spontaneous generation of a self-induced Bloch band Berry flux, which supports and is sustained by a circulating plasmonic motion, even for a linear polarized driving field. This non-equilibrium phase transition occurs above a critical driving amplitude, and depending on system parameters, can enter the spontaneously magnetized state in either a discontinuous or continuous fashion. Berryogenesis relies on nontrivial interband coherences for electronic states near the Fermi energy generated by ac fields readily found in a wide variety of multiband systems. We anticipate that graphene devices, in particular, which can host high quality plasmons, provide a natural and easily available platform to achieve Berryogenesis and spontaneous non-equilibrium (plasmon-mediated) magnetization in present-day devices, e.g., those based on graphene plasmonics.