Giant photocurrent in asymmetric Weyl semimetals from the helical magnetic effect
- Stony Brook Univ., NY (United States); Brookhaven National Lab. (BNL), Upton, NY (United States); Brookhaven National Lab. (BNL), Upton, NY (United States). RIKEN Research Center
- Brookhaven National Lab. (BNL), Upton, NY (United States). RIKEN Research Center
- Univ. of Wurzburg (Germany)
We propose a new type of photoresponse induced in asymmetric Weyl semimetals in an external magnetic field. In usual symmetric Weyl semimetals in a magnetic field, the particles and holes produced by an incident light in different Weyl cones have opposite helicities and hence move in opposite directions, canceling each others's contributions to the photocurrent. However this cancelation does not occur if the Weyl semimetal possesses both a broken particle-hole symmetry and a broken spatial inversion symmetry. We call the resulting generation of photocurrent the helical magnetic effect because it is induced by the helicity imbalance in a magnetic field. We find that due to the large density of states in a magnetic field, the helical magnetic effect induces a remarkable large photocurrent for incident THz frequency light. This suggests a potential application of asymmetric Weyl semimetals for creating THz photosensors.
- Research Organization:
- Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL), Upton, NY (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Office of Science (SC), Nuclear Physics (NP)
- Grant/Contract Number:
- SC0012704; FG-88ER40388; SC-0017662; AC02-98CH10886
- OSTI ID:
- 1466631
- Alternate ID(s):
- OSTI ID: 1461004
- Report Number(s):
- BNL-207982-2018-JAAM; PRBMDO
- Journal Information:
- Physical Review B, Vol. 98, Issue 1; ISSN 2469-9950
- Publisher:
- American Physical Society (APS)Copyright Statement
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
Web of Science
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