Rectification of laser-induced electronic transport through molecules

TL;DR

This paper investigates how laser radiation can induce and control directed electron transport in molecules, breaking symmetry and enabling rectification without voltage, using a Floquet-based formalism for nonlinear regimes.

Contribution

It introduces a novel Floquet-based method to analyze laser-driven electron transport in molecules, accounting for symmetry breaking and non-adiabatic effects.

Findings

Laser radiation can induce rectification in molecular electron transport.

Symmetry breaking mechanisms enable directed current without voltage.

The formalism handles nonlinear, non-adiabatic regimes effectively.

Abstract

We study the influence of laser radiation on the electron transport through a molecular wire weakly coupled to two leads. In the absence of a generalized parity symmetry, the molecule rectifies the laser induced current, resulting in directed electron transport without any applied voltage. We consider two generic ways of dynamical symmetry breaking: mixing of different harmonics of the laser field and molecules consisting of asymmetric groups. For the evaluation of the nonlinear current, a numerically efficient formalism is derived which is based upon the Floquet solutions of the driven molecule. This permits a treatment in the non-adiabatic regime and beyond linear response.