Edge photogalvanic effect caused by optical alignment of carrier momenta in 2D Dirac materials

Abstract

We show that the inter-band absorption of radiation in a 2D Dirac material leads to a direct electric current flowing at sample edges. The photocurrent originates from the momentum alignment of electrons and holes and is controlled by the radiation polarization. We develop a microscopic theory of such an edge photogalvanic effect and calculate the photocurrent for gapped and gapless 2D Dirac materials, also in the presence of a static magnetic field which introduces additional imbalance between the electron and hole currents. Further, we show that the photocurrent can be considerably multiplied in a ratchet-like structure with an array of narrow strips.

9 pages, 6 figures

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Cited by in corpus (10)

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• Nonlinear intensity dependence of terahertz edge photocurrents in graphene
• Photovoltaic Hall effect in two-dimensional electron gas: Kinetic theory
• THz radiation induced circular Hall effect in graphene
• Second harmonic generation at the edge of a two-dimensional electron gas
• Universal transparency and fine band structure near the Dirac point in HgTe quantum wells
• Intrinsic ultrafast edge photocurrent dynamics in WTe${}_2$ driven by broken crystal symmetry
• Edge spin galvanic effect in altermagnets
• Electric and spin-valley currents induced by structured light in 2D Dirac materials