Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2016
College/Unit
Eberly College of Arts and Sciences
Department/Program/Center
Physics and Astronomy
Abstract
Optical injection and detection of charge currents is an alternative to conventional transport and photoemission measurements, avoiding the necessity of invasive contact that may disturb the system being examined. This is a particular concern for analyzing the surface states of topological insulators. In this work one- and two-color sources of photocurrents are isolated and examined in epitaxial thin films of Bi2Se3. We demonstrate that optical excitation and terahertz detection simultaneously captures one- and two-color photocurrent contributions, which has not been required for other material systems. A method is devised to extract the two components, and in doing so each can be related to surface or bulk excitations through symmetry. The separation of such photocurrents in topological insulators opens a new avenue for studying these materials by all-optical methods.
Digital Commons Citation
Bas, Derek A.; Muniz, Rodrigo A.; Babakiray, Sercan; Lederman, David; Sipe, J. E.; and Bristow, Alan D., "Identification of photocurrents in topological insulators" (2016). Faculty & Staff Scholarship. 905.
https://researchrepository.wvu.edu/faculty_publications/905
Source Citation
Bas, D. A., Muniz, R. A., Babakiray, S., Lederman, D., Sipe, J. E., & Bristow, A. D. (2016). Identification of photocurrents in topological insulators. Optics Express, 24(20).
Comments
The article is supported by the WVU Libraries' Open Access Author Fund.