Electric currents induced by twisted light in bulk semiconductors

G. F. QUINTEIRO; P. I. TAMBORENEA

Alemania

Conferencia; CLEO/Europe - EQEC 2009 - European Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics and the European Quantum Electronics Conference; 2009

The paper presents an analysis of the interaction of twisted light (TL) with a bulk semiconductor and predict that the light induces, to first order, an electric current having no analog in the motion of atoms subject to TL. Semiconductors are optically excited by promoting the electrons from the valence to the conduction band. The analysis is restricted to optical excitations that couple electron wave-numbers near k = 0, a typical situation in semiconductor optics.