Spatially dispersive circular photogalvanic effect in a Weyl semimetal

TL;DR

This paper reports a novel spatially dispersive circular photogalvanic effect in type-II Weyl semimetals, enabled by inversion symmetry breaking and beam profile variations, with potential applications in optical information processing.

Contribution

It introduces a new dispersive circular photogalvanic effect in Weyl semimetals, revealing the microscopic mechanism and frequency scaling, controlled by symmetry and beam profile.

Findings

Observation of circulating photocurrent in MoTe2 and Mo0.9W0.1Te2

Identification of a dispersive contribution to the circular photogalvanic effect

Frequency-dependent scaling behavior of the photocurrent

Abstract

Weyl semimetals are gapless topological states of matter with broken inversion and/or time reversal symmetry, which can support unconventional responses to externally applied electrical, optical and magnetic fields. Here we report a new photogalvanic effect in type-II WSMs, MoTe2 and Mo0.9W0.1Te2, which are observed to support a circulating photocurrent when illuminated by circularly polarized light at normal incidence. This effect occurs exclusively in the inversion broken phase, where crucially we find that it is associated with a spatially varying beam profile via a new dispersive contribution to the circular photogalvanic effect (s-CPGE). The response functions derived for s-CPGE reveal the microscopic mechanism of this photocurrent, which are controlled by terms that are allowed in the absence of inversion symmetry, along with asymmetric carrier excitation and relaxation. By evaluating this response for a minimal model of a Weyl semimetal, we obtain the frequency dependent scaling behavior of this form of photocurrent. These results demonstrate opportunities for controlling photoresponse by patterning optical fields to store, manipulate and transmit information over a wide spectral range.