Anomalous shift and optical vorticity in the steady photovoltaic current

Abstract

Steady illumination of a non-centrosymmetric semiconductor results in a bulk photovoltaic current, which is contributed by real-space displacements (`shifts') of charged quasiparticles as they transit between Bloch states. The shift induced by interband excitation via absorption of photons has received the prevailing attention. However, this excitation-induced shift can be far outweighed ($\ll$) by the shift induced by intraband relaxation, or by the shift induced by radiative recombination of electron-hole pairs. This outweighing ($\ll$) is attributed to (i) time-reversal-symmetric, intraband Berry curvature, which results in an anomalous shift of quasiparticles as they scatter with phonons, as well as to (ii) topological singularities in the interband Berry phase (`optical vortices'), which makes the photovoltaic current extraordinarily sensitive to the linear polarization vector of the light source. Both (i-ii) potentially lead to nonlinear conductivities of order $mA{V}^{-2}$, without finetuning of the incident radiation frequency, band gap, or joint density of states. A case study of BiTeI showcases the anomalous shift and optical vorticity in a realistic material.

22+55 pages, 10+9 Figures; We touched up a few derivations, presented a more nuanced discussion of potential solar cell applications in v2; We presented a Chern-vorticity theorem that relates optical vortices and Chern numbers, and a case study on BiTeI in v3; In v4, we presented more discussion about photovoltaic effect in BiTeI

References in corpus (10)

• Photocurrents in Weyl semimetals
• Ballistic and shift currents in the bulk photovoltaic effect theory
• Nontrivial Quantum Geometry and the Strength of Electron-Phonon Coupling
• Multicellularity of delicate topological insulators
• Delicate topology protected by rotation symmetry: Crystalline Hopf insulators and beyond
• Generalized Wilson Loop Method for Nonlinear Light-Matter Interaction
• Principles of Low Dissipation Computing from a Stochastic Circuit Model
• On the energy conversion efficiency of the bulk photovoltaic effect
• First Principles Calculation of Ballistic Current from Electron-Hole Interaction
• Quantum Kinetics of the Magneto Photo Galvanic Effect

Cited by in corpus (14)

• Revealing Quantum Geometry in Nonlinear Quantum Materials
• Quantized Integrated Shift Effect in Multigap Topological Phases
• Gauge-invariant projector calculus for quantum state geometry and applications to observables in crystals
• The multi-state geometry of shift current and polarization
• Universal Wilson Loop Bound of Quantum Geometry
• Diverging shift current responses in the gapless limit of two-dimensional systems
• Nonlinear photomagnetization in insulators
• Quantum Geometric Origin of the Intrinsic Nonlinear Hall Effect
• From quantum geometry to non-linear optics and gerbes: Recent advances in topological band theory
• Superfluid stiffness of superconductors with delicate topology
• Dissipation-Shaped Quantum Geometry in Nonlinear Transport
• Unified theory of the photovoltaic Hall effect by field- and light-induced Berry curvatures
• Exploring Many-Body Quantum Geometry Beyond the Quantum Metric with Correlation Functions: A Time-Dependent Perspective
• Manipulating Charge Distribution in Moiré Superlattices by Light