We investigate both experimentally and theoretically, the magneto-gyrotropic photogalvanic effect in zinc-blende based quantum wells with C2v point-group symmetry using optical excitation in the terahertz frequency range. The investigated frequencies cause intra-subband but no inter-band and inter-subband transitions. While at normal incidence the photocurrent vanishes at zero magnetic field, it is shown that an in-plane magnetic field generates photocurrents both for polarized and unpolarized excitation. In general the spin-galvanic effect, caused by circularly polarized light, and the magneto-gyrotropic effect, caused by unpolarized excitation, is superimposed. It is shown that in the case of two specific geometries both effects are separable.
@article{arxiv.cond-mat/0311474,
title = {Magneto-Gyrotropic Photogalvanic Effect in Semiconductor Quantum Wells},
author = {V. V. Bel'kov and S. D. Ganichev and Petra Schneider and S. Giglberger and E. L. Ivchenko and S. A. Tarasenko and W. Wegscheider and D. Weiss and W. Prettl},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:cond-mat/0311474},
year = {2007}
}