Intrinsic efficiency of injection photocurrents in magnetic materials

Abstract

The generation of shift and ballistic photocurrents in non-centrosymmetric materials represents a promising alternative mechanism for light energy harvesting. Many studies have focused on finding the best suited materials by maximizing the photocurrent magnitude, but estimating the actual efficiency requires knowledge of the light-induced DC photoconductivity and is rarely considered. Using the recently proposed jerk current as photoconductivity, in this work we show that only ballistic photocurrents have finite efficiency in the limit of large relaxation times $\tau$. Moreover, at zero temperature the only ballistic current which is finite for unpolarized light is the magnetic injection current, only present in magnetic materials. We present a band structure expression for the efficiency of such photocurrent, showing that it scales as $(\hslash \Omega -E_g{)}^2$ near the band edge, and we present its frequency dependence for a simple tight-binding model. Our work provides a new tool to guide the search for efficient energy harvesting based on the magnetic injection current.

arXiv comment10 pages, 3 figures

References in corpus (22)

• Quantized circular photogalvanic effect in Weyl semimetals
• First principles calculations of the Shift Current Bulk Photovoltaic Effect in Ferroelectrics
• Colossal Bulk Photovoltaic Effect in a Weyl Semimetal
• Design principles for shift current photovoltaics
• Low-frequency divergence and quantum geometry of the bulk photovoltaic effect in topological semimetals
• Magnetically Switchable Light-Matter Interaction in the Two-Dimensional Magnet CrI3
• Ab initio calculation of the shift photocurrent by Wannier interpolation
• Magnetoelectric MnPS3 thiophosphate as a new candidate for ferrotoroidicity
• Chiral photocurrent in parity-violating magnet and enhanced response in topological antiferromagnet
• Consequences of Time-reversal-symmetry Breaking in the Light-Matter Interaction: Berry Curvature, Quantum Metric and Diabatic Motion
• Quantitative relationship between polarization differences and the zone-averaged shift photocurrent
• Ballistic and shift currents in the bulk photovoltaic effect theory
• Nonlinear optical responses of crystalline systems: Results from a velocity gauge analysis
• Giant nonlinear photocurrent in $\mathcal{P}\mathcal{T}$-symmetric magnetic topological quantum materials
• Difference frequency generation in topological semimetals
• Bulk photovoltaic effects in the presence of a static electric field
• Giant linearly-polarized photogalvanic effect and second harmonic generation in two-dimensional axion insulators
• Phonon-Assisted Ballistic Current From First Principles Calculations
• Current-voltage characteristic and shot noise of shift current photovoltaics
• Upper limit on nonlinear optical processes: shift current and second harmonic generation in extended systems
• Jerk current: A novel bulk photovoltaic effect
• Photocurrent response in parity-time symmetric current-ordered states