Indirect interband transition induced by optical near fields with large wave numbers

Abstract

Optical near fields (ONFs) have Fourier components with large wave numbers that are two or three orders of magnitude larger than those of far-field propagating light owing to their nonuniformity in space. By utilizing these large wave numbers, the ONF is expected to induce an indirect interband transition between Bloch states having different wave numbers and directly generate an electron-hole pair without electron-phonon coupling. We perform time-dependent dynamics calculations of a one-dimensional periodic potential with an indirect band-gap structure and demonstrate that the ONF definitely induces an indirect interband transition. Instead of using the general Bloch boundary condition, which is usually imposed in conventional band structure calculations, we adopt an alternative boundary condition, the Born--von K\'arm\'an boundary condition, to appropriately treat indirect interband transitions. The calculated absorption spectra for the far-field and ONF excitations show different absorption edges and spectral patterns. We argue that this difference can be experimentally measured as evidence of the effects of the large wave numbers of the ONF.