Photon-drag photovoltaic effects and quantum geometric nature

Abstract

The bulk photovoltaic effect (BPVE) generates a direct current photocurrent under uniform irradiation and is a nonlinear optical effect traditionally studied in non-centrosymmetric materials. The two main origins of BPVE are the shift and injection currents, arising from transitions in electron position and electron velocity during optical excitation, respectively. Recently, it was proposed that photon-drag effects could unlock BPVE in centrosymmetric materials. However, experimental progress remains limited. In this work, we provide a comprehensive theoretical analysis of photon-drag effects inducing BPVE (photon-drag BPVE). Notably, we find that photon-drag BPVE can be directly linked to quantum geometric tensors. Additionally, we propose that photon-drag shift currents can be fully isolated from other current contributions in non-magnetic centrosymmetric materials. We apply our theory explicitly to the 2D topological insulator $1T^{\prime }$-WTe${}_2$. Furthermore, we investigate photon-drag BPVE in a centrosymmetric magnetic Weyl semimetal, where we demonstrate that linearly polarized light generates photon-drag shift currents.

7 pages, 3 figures, plus Supplementary Material

References in corpus (7)

• Quantum Spin Hall Effect and Topological Field Effect Transistor in Two-Dimensional Transition Metal Dichalcogenides
• Observation of the Quantum Spin Hall Effect up to 100 Kelvin in a Monolayer Crystal
• Photocurrents in Weyl semimetals
• Photocurrent as a multi-physics diagnostic of quantum materials
• Spin-orbit-parity coupled superconductivity in topological monolayer WTe${}_2$
• Time-reversal invariant finite-size topology
• Robust quantisation of circular photogalvanic effect in multiplicative topological semimetals

Cited by in corpus (3)

• Visible and Terahertz Nonlinear Responses in the Topological Noble Metal Dichalcogenide PdTe2
• Manipulating Charge Distribution in Moiré Superlattices by Light
• Enhanced detection of circularly polarized photons with topological materials