All-optically induced currents resulting from frequency modulated coherent polarization
Optics
2013-06-14 v1 Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics
Other Condensed Matter
Abstract
We employ polarization-shaped ultrafast optical pulses to generate photocurrents which only arise if the optically induced coherent polarization is frequency modulated. This frequency modulation is obtained via detuned excitation of light-hole excitons in (110)-oriented GaAs quantum wells. The observed photocurrents vanish for resonant excitation of excitons and reverse their direction with a change of the sign of detuning. Moreover, the currents do not exist for continuous-wave excitation. Our work reveals the existence of a new class of photocurrents and visualizes the complexity of current response tensors. This is helpful for the better understanding of optically induced microscopic transport in semiconductors.
Cite
@article{arxiv.1302.4633,
title = {All-optically induced currents resulting from frequency modulated coherent polarization},
author = {Shekhar Priyadarshi and Klaus Pierz and Mark Bieler},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1302.4633},
year = {2013}
}