Spectra of circular and linear photogalvanic effect at inter-band excitation in In0.15Ga0.85As/Al0.3Ga0.7As multiple quantum wells

Abstract

Spectra of circular photogalvanic effect (CPGE) and linear photogalvanic effect (LPGE) for inter-band transition have been experimentally investigated in In0.15Ga0.85As/Al0.3Ga0.7As multiple quantum wells (QWs) at room temperature. The CPGE and LPGE spectra are quite similar during the spectral region corresponding to the transitions 1e1hh (the first valence subband of heavy hole to the first conduction band) and 1e2hh, which is also similar to that of the photoconductivity. Comparing the photocurrent induced by LPGE and CPGE along [110] and [11¯0] directions, we obtain the anisotropic ratio of the linear photogalvanic tensor χ and circular photogalvanic tensor γ to be χxxz/χyyz=3.6 and γxy/γyx=1.3 (x∥[110] and y∥[11¯0]), which indicate that the symmetry of the structure belongs to C2v point group and the Rashba spin splitting is the dominant mechanism to induce the k-linear spin splitting of the subband in the In0.15Ga0.85As/Al0.3Ga0.7As QWs. The magnitude of the LPGE is nearly at the same order with that of the CPGE for the investigated spectral region at room temperature.