Bulk photovoltaic effects in altermagnets

Abstract

The bulk photovoltaic effect is a photocurrent generation from alternating electric field, which is a promising candidate for future efficient solar cell technology. It is the second-order optical current, which is the injection current or the shift current. We focus on the direct current generation. By employing a simple two-band model of the $d$-wave altermagnet coupled with the Rashba interaction, we show that the linearly polarized light can generate the injection and shift currents when the Néel vector points to an in-plane direction. The magnitude of the injection current is almost constant over a wide range of the frequency $\omega$ of the applied light provided it is smaller than a certain critical frequency ${\omega }_{\text{c}}$ and larger than the bulk gap energy ${\epsilon }_{\text{gap}}$, ${\epsilon }_{\text{gap}}<\hslash \omega <\hslash {\omega }_{\text{c}}$. Hence, the use of the injection current is quite efficient for solar cell technology because any photon whose energy is within this range can be equally utilized.

7 pages, 5 figures

References in corpus (7)

• Antiferromagnetism in RuO${}_2$ as $d$-wave Pomeranchuk instability
• Photocurrents in Weyl semimetals
• Perovskite as a spin current generator
• Majorana corner modes and tunable patterns in an altermagnet heterostructure
• Shift charge and spin photocurrents in Dirac surface states of topological insulator
• Third-order and fifth-order nonlinear spin-current generation in $g$-wave and $i$-wave altermagnets, and perfectly nonreciprocal spin-current in $f$-wave magnets
• Intrinsic nonlinear conductivity induced by quantum geometry in altermagnets and measurement of the in-plane Néel vector

Cited by in corpus (6)

• Quantum geometry and $X$-wave magnets with $X=p,d,f,g,i$
• Almost half-quantized planar Hall effects in $X$-wave magnets with $X=p,d,f,g,i$
• Quantization of spin circular photogalvanic effect in altermagnetic Weyl semimetals
• Tunneling magnetoresistance in a junction made of $X$-wave magnets with $X=p,d,f,g,i$
• Cartesian Nodal Lines and Magnetic Kramers Weyl Nodes in Spin-Split Antiferromagnets
• Nonlinear opto-magnetic signature of d-wave altermagnets