Photovoltaic effect in an asymmetric GaAs/AlGaAs nanostructure produced as a result of laser excitation

Magneto-gyrotropic photogalvanic effects in semiconductor quantum wells

“…This mechanism was investigated theoretically and observed experimentally for direct interband transitions [21,22] and proved to be efficient. To obtain such a current for indirect optical transitions one should take into account effects of the second order like non-parabolicity or transitions via virtual states in the other bands.…”

“…Photocurrents which require simultaneously gyrotropy and the presence of a magnetic field may be gathered in a class of magneto-optical phenomena denoted as magneto-gyrotropic photogalvanic effects. So far such currents have been intensively studied in low-dimensional structures at direct interband and inter-subband transitions [15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22]. In these investigations the magneto-induced photocurrents were related to spin-independent mechanisms, except for [15,20], where direct optical transitions between branches of the spin-split electron subband were considered.…”

Magneto-gyrotropic photogalvanic effects due to inter-subband absorption in quantum wells

“…The spin-independent mechanisms reported so far comprise magnetic field induced photocurrents caused by a diamagnetic shift of energy bands [29][30][31][32]38 and diamagnetic corrections to electron-phonon interaction 44,45 . In this Section we consider step by step various microscopic mechanisms which can contribute to the photocurrent induced by optical transitions between the quantum subbands e1 and e2 in the presence of an in-plane magnetic field.…”

“…Essential progress has been achieved in the generation of magnetic field induced photogalvanic effects applying visible, near-, mid-and far-infrared laser radiation (for a review, see [2,3,23]). It has been demonstrated that optical excitation of quantum well structures can result in spin photocurrents, caused by the Drude absorption due to spin-dependent asymmetric scattering [24][25][26] or direct optical transitions between branches of the spin-split electron subband [27,28], as well as in photocurrents due to spin-independent diamagnetic mechanisms [29][30][31][32].…”

Terahertz Radiation Induced Spin Photocurrents in Non-Magnetic Low Dimensional Structures

“…Such currents are observed in the range of fundamental absorption and at the excitation with intense terahertz radiation. While mechanisms of current due to inter-band excitation are spin independent [54][55][56][57][58], terahertz radiation generates spin polarized currents. THz radiation induced magneto-gyrotropic effects are observed due to direct transitions between spin-split Rashba-Dresselhaus branches of the lowest electron subband [50][51][52] and non-resonant Drude absorption [11,53].…”