2016, Choporova, Yulia Yu., Gerasimov, Vasily V., Knyazev, Boris A., Sergeev, Sergey M., Shevchenko, Oleg A., Zhukavin, Roman K., Abrosimov, Nikolay V., Kovalevsky, Konstantin A., Ovchar, Vladimir K., Hübers, Heinz-Wilhelm, Kulipanov, Gennady N., Shastin, Valery N., Schneider, Harald, Vinokurov, Nikolay A.

A single-color pump-probe system has been commissioned at the Novosibirsk free electron laser. The laser emits a tunable monochromatic terahertz radiation. To prove the proper system operation, we investigated the time-resolved absorption of a sample of n-type germanium doped with antimony, which was previously investigated at the FELBE facility, in the temperature range from 5 to 40 K. The measured relaxation time amounted to about 1.7 ns, which agreed with the results obtained at the FELBE. The results of pump-probe measurements of non-equilibrium dynamics of hot electrons in the germanium crystal at cryogenic temperatures are presented for wavelengths of 105, 141 and 150 μm.

2019, Sotome, M., Nakamura, M., Fujioka, J., Ogino, M., Kaneko, Y., Morimoto, T., Zhang, Y., Kawasaki, M., Nagaosa, N., Tokura, Y., Ogawa, N.

Photoexcitation in solids brings about transitions of electrons/ holes between different electronic bands. If the solid lacks an inversion symmetry, these electronic transitions support spontaneous photocurrent due to the geometric phase of the constituting electronic bands: the Berry connection. This photocurrent, termed shift current, is expected to emerge on the timescale of primary photoexcitation process. We observe ultrafast evolution of the shift current in a prototypical ferroelectric semiconductor antimony sulfur iodide (SbSI) by detecting emitted terahertz electromagnetic waves. By sweeping the excitation photon energy across the bandgap, ultrafast electron dynamics as a source of terahertz emission abruptly changes its nature, reflecting a contribution of Berry connection on interband optical transition. The shift excitation carries a net charge flow and is followed by a swing over of the electron cloud on a subpicosecond timescale. Understanding these substantive characters of the shift current with the help of first-principles calculation will pave the way for its application to ultrafast sensors and solar cells.