Abstract
It is shown that the dissipation of energy in an electron gas confined in a quantum well made of non-centrosymmetric crystal leads to a direct electric current. The current originates from the real-space shift of the wave packets of Bloch electrons at the electron scattering by phonons, which tends to restore thermal equilibrium between the electron and phonon subsystems. We develop a microscopic theory of such a phonogalvanic effect for narrow band gap zinc-blende quantum wells.
Highlights
The currents of charge carriers, electrons or holes, in solid-state systems are commonly generated by gradients of electric or chemical potentials, temperature, etc
We show that the breaking of thermal equilibrium between the electron and phonon subsystems in semiconductor structure of sufficiently low symmetry is enough to drive an electric current
We study this effect for narrow gap two-dimensional (2D) systems made of zinc-blend-type semiconductors, such as HgTe/CdHgTe quantum wells (QWs), which naturally lack the center of space inversion
Summary
The currents of charge carriers, electrons or holes, in solid-state systems are commonly generated by gradients of electric or chemical potentials, temperature, etc. While the spin-dependent shift of electrons at momentum scattering (side jump contribution) has been intensively studied, in the physics of the anomalous and spin Hall effects [15,16,17,18,19,20], less is known about the charge shift which occurs at inelastic scattering [21, 22] We study this effect for narrow gap two-dimensional (2D) systems made of zinc-blend-type semiconductors, such as HgTe/CdHgTe quantum wells (QWs), which naturally lack the center of space inversion. These 2D structures, except for QWs grown along the high-symmetry axes [001] and [111], are polar in the plane and support the generation of electric current in the presence of energy transfer between the electron. In analogy to the (linear) photogalvanic effect [2, 23], where the absorption of photons gives rise to a shift electric current, the effect we study can be named phonogalvanic
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