Optically induced Aharonov-Bohm effect in mesoscopic rings

Abstract

We show theoretically that strong electron coupling to circularly polarized photons in non-singly-connected nanostructures results in the appearance of an artificial gauge field that changes the electron phase. The effect arises from the breaking of time-reversal symmetry and is analogous to the well-known Aharonov-Bohm phase effect. It can manifest itself in the oscillations of conductance as a function of the intensity and frequency of the illumination. The theory of the effect is elaborated for mesoscopic rings in both ballistic and diffusive regimes.

Published version

References in corpus (1)

• Measurement of Aharonov-Bohm oscillations in mesoscopic metallic rings in the presence of high-frequency electromagnetic fields

Cited by in corpus (1)

• Aharonov-Bohm effect for excitons in a semiconductor quantum ring dressed by circularly polarized light