English

Photogalvanic effect in few layer graphene

Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics 2026-04-13 v2

Abstract

We systematically investigate the nonlinear photogalvanic effect in few-layer graphene with various stacking orders, including AA- and AB-stacked bilayers, and AAA-, ABA-, and ABC-stacked trilayers. Using a tight-binding model to describe the electronic states, the shift current conductivity and jerk current conductivity are calculated over a broad spectral range from terahertz to visible frequencies. Our symmetry analysis reveals that a nonvanishing shift current emerges only in ABA-stacked trilayer graphene due to its broken inversion symmetry, with a peak conductivity reaching approximately 1.21×10131.21 \times 10^{-13} A\cdotm/V2^2 at optimal doping. In contrast, the jerk current, permitted in all structures, requires an in-plane static electric field and exhibits pronounced spectral tunability with chemical potential. These findings establish a comprehensive symmetry-band-field coupling paradigm for nonlinear photocurrents in layered graphene and provide design principles for tunable, polarization-sensitive photodetection and energy-harvesting devices based on van der Waals heterostructures.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2602.20454,
  title  = {Photogalvanic effect in few layer graphene},
  author = {Zhaohang Li and Kainan Chang and Haoyu Li and Yuxuan Gao and Wei Xin and Jinluo Cheng and Haiyang Xu},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2602.20454},
  year   = {2026}
}
R2 v1 2026-07-01T10:49:02.468Z