Signatures of bulk g-wave altermagnetism in optically excited α − MnTe

For planar d-wave altermagnets, it has been shown that a spin polarization can be induced in a controlled fashion by ultrashort-pulse excitation, even though the material is magnetically compensated. Here, we theoretically analyze the response of the prototypical bulk <a:math xmlns:a="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <a:mrow> <a:mi>g</a:mi> <a:mtext>−</a:mtext> <a:mi>wave</a:mi> </a:mrow> </a:math> altermagnet <b:math xmlns:b="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <b:mrow> <b:mi>α</b:mi> <b:mtext>−</b:mtext> <b:mi>MnTe</b:mi> </b:mrow> </b:math> to linearly polarized ultrashort pulses. We demonstrate how the electronic spin response in <c:math xmlns:c="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <c:mrow> <c:mi>α</c:mi> <c:mtext>−</c:mtext> <c:mi>MnTe</c:mi> </c:mrow> </c:math> exhibits different symmetry characteristics by calculating the excited electron distributions based on band structure data. These characteristics depend not only on the nodal planes of the bulk g-wave altermagnet, but also on the excitation pulse. We present a simple procedure to analyze the excited-state characteristics via two-dimensional cuts through the three-dimensional Brillouin zone, which can be used as guidance to present-day magneto-optical techniques.