Photocurrents induced by structured light

Abstract

Advances in manipulating the structure of optical beams enable the study of interaction between structured light and low-dimensional semiconductor systems. We explore the photocurrents in two-dimensional systems excited by such inhomogeneous radiation with structured field. Besides the contribition associated with the intensity gradient, the photocurrent contains contributions driven by the gradients of the Stokes polarization parameters and the phase of the electromagnetic field. We develop a microscopic theory of the photocurrents induced by structured light and derive analytical expressions for all the photocurrent contributions at intraband transport of electrons. The theory is applied to analyze the radial and azimuthal photocurrents excited by twisted light beams carrying orbital angular momentum, and possible experiments to detect the photocurrents are discussed.

10 pages, 7 figures

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Cited by in corpus (7)

• Second harmonic generation due to spatial structure of radiation beam
• Imprinting spiral Higgs waves onto superconductors with vortex beams
• Photogalvanic and photon drag phenomena in superconductors and hybrid superconducting systems
• Photon drag at the junction between metal and 2d semiconductor
• Nonlinear Terahertz Resonances from Ballistic Electron Funnelling
• Exact theory of edge diffraction and launching of transverse electric plasmons at two-dimensional junctions
• Electric and spin-valley currents induced by structured light in 2D Dirac materials