Spin and charge transport induced by a twisted light beam on a surface of a topological insulator

Abstract

We theoretically study spin and charge transport induced by a twisted light beam irradiated on a disordered surface of a doped three dimensional topological insulator (TI). We find that various types of spin vortices are imprinted on the surface of the TI depending on the spin and orbital angular momentum of the incident light. The key mechanism for the appearance of the unconventional spin structure is the spin-momentum locking in the surface state of the TI. Besides, the diffusive transport of electrons under an inhomogeneous electric field causes a gradient of the charge density, which then induces nonlocal charge current and spin density as well as the spin current. We discuss the relation between these quantities within the linear response to the applied electric field using the Keldysh-Green's function method.

39 pages, 7 figures

References in corpus (6)

• Optical spin-to-orbital angular momentum conversion in inhomogeneous anisotropic media
• Dissipationless Quantum Spin Current at Room Temperature
• Spin-Charge Locking and Tunneling into a Helical Metal
• Twisted-light-induced optical transitions in semiconductors: Free-carrier quantum kinetics
• Spin-charge transport driven by magnetization dynamics on disordered surface of doped topological insulators
• Insensitivity of spin dynamics to the orbital angular momentum transferred from twisted light to extended semiconductors

Cited by in corpus (7)

• Helical quantum Hall phase in graphene on SrTiO${}_3$
• Dynamical control of topology in ferroelectric skyrmions via twisted light
• Formulation of the twisted-light--matter interaction at the phase singularity: beams with strong magnetic fields
• Inverse-Faraday effect from the orbital angular momentum of light
• Spin-torque resonance due to diffusive dynamics at a surface of topological insulator
• Poincaré sphere engineering of dynamical ferroelectric topological solitons
• Optical-vortex-pulse induced nonequilibrium spin textures in spin-orbit coupled electrons