Few-cycle lightwave-driven currents in a semiconductor at high repetition rate

• Main Authors: Langer, Fabian, Liu, Yen-Po, Ren, Zhe, Flodgren, Vidar, Guo, Chen, Vogelsang, Jan, Mikaelsson, Sara, Sytcevich, Ivan, Ahrens, Jan, L'Huillier, Anne, Arnold, Cord L, Mikkelsen, Anders
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: 26-01-2020
• Subjects: Physics - Optics
• DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2001.09433

When an intense, few-cycle light pulse impinges on a dielectric or
semiconductor material, the electric field will interact nonlinearly with the
solid, driving a coherent current. An asymmetry of the ultrashort,
carrier-envelope-phase-stable waveform results in a net transfer of charge,
which can be measured by macroscopic electric contact leads. This effect has
been pioneered with extremely short, single-cycle laser pulses at low
repetition rate, thus limiting the applicability of its potential for ultrafast
electronics. We investigate lightwave-driven currents in gallium nitride using
few-cycle laser pulses of nearly twice the duration and at a repetition rate
two orders of magnitude higher than in previous work. We successfully simulate
our experimental data with a theoretical model based on interfering multiphoton
transitions, using the exact laser pulse shape retrieved from dispersion-scan
measurements. Substantially increasing the repetition rate and relaxing the
constraint on the pulse duration marks an important step forward towards
applications of lightwave-driven electronics.