Bhalla Pankaj, MacDonald Allan H, Culcer Dimitrie
Beijing Computational Science Research Center, Beijing 100193, China.
School of Physics, University of New South Wales, Sydney 2052, Australia.
Phys Rev Lett. 2020 Feb 28;124(8):087402. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.124.087402.
The rectified nonlinear response of a clean, time-reversal symmetric, undoped semiconductor to an ac electric field includes a well known intrinsic shift current. We show that when Kramers degeneracy is broken, a distinct second order rectified response appears due to Bloch state anomalous velocities in a system with an oscillating Fermi surface. This effect, which we refer to as the resonant photovoltaic effect, produces a resonant galvanic current peak at the interband absorption threshold in doped semiconductors or semimetals with approximate particle-hole symmetry. We evaluate the resonant photovoltaic effect for a model of the surface states of a magnetized topological insulator.
