Switchable Surface Linear Photogalvanic Effect in the Magnetic Weyl Semimetal Co3Sn2S2

TL;DR

This study explores the surface linear photogalvanic effect in Co3Sn2S2, revealing symmetry-dependent behaviors and potential for magnetically controlled optoelectronic applications.

Contribution

It demonstrates the symmetry-allowed surface LPGE in Co3Sn2S2 and analyzes the intrinsic and extrinsic contributions, highlighting the role of surface states and symmetry constraints.

Findings

LPGE vanishes in bulk but appears on the surface due to broken inversion symmetry.

Extrinsic LPGE contribution is large and linked to Fermi-arc surface states.

Photocurrent exhibits linear temperature dependence and a power-law frequency scaling.

Abstract

We investigate the linear photogalvanic effect (LPGE) on the surface of the magnetic Weyl semimetal Co3Sn2S2 using a Green's-function and diagrammatic formalism. While the LPGE vanishes in the centrosymmetric bulk, it is symmetry-allowed on the surface where inversion symmetry is broken. We show that unitary crystal symmetries on the surface produce characteristic sign reversals of the total photocurrent at certain polarization angles upon flipping the magnetization. We further find that the intrinsic contribution to the LPGE is strongly constrained by an antiunitary mirror symmetry, which forces several nonlinear response tensor elements to vanish. In contrast, the extrinsic contribution is not subject to these constraints and displays a large magnitude which, we argue, is due to the enhanced density of states associated with Fermi-arc surface states. The current exhibits an approximately linear temperature dependence and a low-frequency power-law scaling, |jy| proportional to omega^-2.2, with weak temperature dependence of the scaling exponent. Our results identify Co3Sn2S2 as a promising platform for experimentally accessing symmetry-controlled nonlinear transport in realistic systems and for applications in magnetically controlled optoelectronic devices.