2024/06/14 by Amin Lakhal, Lakhal, Amin, Stéphane Virally +5
Materials Science · Physics and Astronomy · #FOS: Physical sciences #Magnetic and transport properties of perovskites and related materials #Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) #Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics (cond-mat.mes-hall) #Physics of Superconductivity and Magnetism #Quantum and electron transport phenomena
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2406.10397
openalex publication_date 2024/06/14 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We propose a time-resolved optical measurement scheme for sampling transient charge and spin currents in a bulk centrosymmetric semiconductor. The technique relies on emission of second harmonic light triggered by a pulsed below-gap optical excitation and a spontaneous intraband polarization arising from spin or charge motion, mediated by a χ^(3)-based nonlinear optical process. Our proposal uses homodyne amplification to boost the weak second harmonic signal, making it detectable with conventional electronics, calculated for charge current in a room temperature GaAs semiconductor. This all-optical technique requires neither electrical contact nor bias fields and the signal is estimated at a few percent relative to the shot noise of the probe. This proposal motivates a novel method for exploring thermal and quantum fluctuations in the solid state in a non-invasive manner.