Centrifugal photovoltaic and photogalvanic effects driven by structured light

Abstract

Much efforts are devoted to material structuring in a quest to enhance the photovoltaic effect. We show that structuring light in a way it transfers orbital angular momentum to semiconductor-based rings results in a steady charge accumulation at the outer boundaries that be utilized for the generation of an open circuit voltage or a photogalvanic (bulk photovoltaic) type current. This effect which stems both from structuring light and matter (confinement potentials), can be magnified even at fixed moderate intensities, by increasing the orbital angular momentum of light which strengthens the effective centrifugal potential that repels the charge outwards. Based on a full numerical time propagation of the carriers wave functions in the presence of light pulses we demonstrate how the charge buildup leads to a useable voltage or directed photocurrent whose amplitudes and directions are controllable by the light pulse parameters.

9 pages, 4 figures

References in corpus (9)

• Entanglement of Orbital Angular Momentum States of Photons
• Optical spin-to-orbital angular momentum conversion in inhomogeneous anisotropic media
• Optical alignment and spinning of laser-trapped microscopic particles
• Beating the channel capacity limit for linear photonic superdense coding
• Spectroscopy of nanoscopic semiconductor rings
• Energy spectra of quantum rings
• Integrated multi vector vortex beam generator
• Revivals, collapses and magnetic-pulse generation in quantum rings
• Nonlinear resonant tunneling in systems coupled to quantum reservoirs

Cited by in corpus (9)

• Twisted-ligth--ion interaction: the role of longitudinal fields
• Photocurrents induced by structured light
• Magneto-Electric Response of Quantum Structures Driven by Optical Vector Beams
• All-Optical Generation and Tuning of Ultrafast Spin-Hall Current via Optical Vortices
• Tunable High Harmonic Pulses from Nanorings Swirled by Optical Vortices
• Spatio-temporal delay in photoionization by polarization structured laser fields
• Optical conductivity and orbital magnetization of Floquet vortex states
• Optical vortex probe of loop-current chirality in moiré materials
• Electric and spin-valley currents induced by structured light in 2D Dirac materials