Switchable enhanced spin photocurrent in Rashba and cubic Dresselhaus ferroelectric semiconductors

Abstract

Generating and controlling spin current (SC) are of central interest in spin physics and applications. To date, the spin-orbit interaction (SOI) is an established pathway to generate SC through the spin-charge current conversion. We predict an efficient spin-light conversion via the Rashba and higher-order cubic Dresselhaus SOIs in ferroelectrics. Different from the known Edelstein effect, where SC is created by the nonequilibrium spin density, our predicted spin-polarized current is from direct interactions between light and unique spin textures generated by SOI in ferroelectrics. Using first-principles simulations, we demonstrate these concepts by calculating the DC spin photocurrent in a prototypical Rashba ferroelectric, α-GeTe. The photo-induced SC is about two orders of magnitude larger than the charge photocurrent. More importantly, we can conveniently switch the direction of SC by an applied electric field via inverting the spin textures. These predictions give hope to generating and controlling light-driven SC via nonvolatile electric-field.

22 pages, 4 figures

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Cited by in corpus (2)

• A comprehensive theory of second-order spin photocurrents
• Coherence Control of Directional Nonlinear Photocurrent in Spatially Symmetric Systems