High-frequency nonlinear transport and photogalvanic effects in two-dimensional topological insulators

Abstract

Excitation of a topological insulator by a high-frequency electric field of a laser radiation leads to a dc electric current in the helical edge channel whose direction and magnitude are sensitive to the radiation polarization and depend on the physical properties of the edge. We present an overview of theoretical and experimental studies of such edge photoelectric effects in two-dimensional topological insulators based on semiconductor quantum wells. First, we give a phenomenological description of edge photocurrents, which may originate from the photogalvanic effects or the photon drag effects, for edges of all possible symmetry. Then, we discuss microscopic mechanisms of photocurrent generation for different types of optical transitions involving helical edge states. They include direct and indirect optical transitions within the edge channel and edge-to-bulk optical transitions.

arXiv comment13 pages, 8 figures, 2 tables

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Cited by in corpus (16)

• Resonant photovoltaic effect in doped magnetic semiconductors
• Symmetry breaking and circular photogalvanic effect in epitaxial Cd${}_x$Hg${}_{1-x}$Te films
• Topological insulators based on HgTe
• Highly superlinear photogalvanic effects in (Bi${}_{0.3}$Sb${}_{0.7}$)${}_2$(Te${}_{0.1}$Se${}_{0.9}$)${}_3$: Probing 3D topological insulator surface states at room temperature
• Edge photogalvanic effect caused by optical alignment of carrier momenta in 2D Dirac materials
• Photocurrents induced by structured light
• Optically induced topological states on the surface of mercury telluride
• Nonlinear intensity dependence of terahertz edge photocurrents in graphene
• Edge photocurrent in bilayer graphene due to inter-Landau-level transitions
• Nonlinear optical absorption and photocurrents in topological insulators
• Raman Photogalvanic Effect: photocurrent at inelastic light scattering
• Second harmonic generation at the edge of a two-dimensional electron gas
• Valley spin-acoustic resonance in MoS${}_2$ monolayers
• Universal transparency and fine band structure near the Dirac point in HgTe quantum wells
• Effects of electron-hole asymmetry on electronic structure of helical edge states in HgTe/HgCdTe quantum wells
• Hard wall edge confinement in 2D topological insulators and the energy of the Dirac Point