Strong electron-electron interactions in graphene are expected to result in multiple-excitation generation by the absorption of a single photon. We show that the impact of carrier multiplication on photocurrent response is enhanced by very inefficient electron cooling, resulting in an abundance of hot carriers. The hot-carrier-mediated energy transport dominates the photoresponse and manifests itself in quantum efficiencies that can exceed unity, as well as in a characteristic dependence of the photocurrent on gate voltages. The pattern of multiple photocurrent sign changes as a function of gate voltage provides a fingerprint of hot-carrier-dominated transport and carrier multiplication.
@article{arxiv.1105.1142,
title = {Hot Carrier Transport and Photocurrent Response in Graphene},
author = {Justin C. W. Song and Mark S. Rudner and Charles M. Marcus and Leonid S. Levitov},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1105.1142},
year = {2011}
}