TY - JOUR

T1 - Roles of band gap and Kane electronic dispersion in the terahertz-frequency nonlinear optical response in HgCdTe

AU - Soranzio, Davide

AU - Abreu, Elsa

AU - Houver, Sarah

AU - Dössegger, Janine

AU - Savoini, Matteo

AU - Teppe, Frédéric

AU - Krishtopenko, Sergey

AU - Mikhailov, Nikolay N.

AU - Dvoretsky, Sergey A.

AU - Johnson, Steven L.

N1 - This work was supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation under Project No. 200020_192337. E.A. acknowledges funding support from the Swiss National Science Foundation through Ambizione Grant No. PZ00P2_179691 and through Starting Grant TMSGI2_211211. This work was also supported by the CNRS through IRP "TeraMIR" and by the "ANR" for Equipex Hybat project (ANR-21-ESRE-0026). High-performance computing resources were obtained from ETH Zurich (Euler cluster).

PY - 2024/9/1

Y1 - 2024/9/1

N2 - Materials with linear electronic dispersion often feature high carrier mobilities and unusually strong nonlinear optical interactions. In this work, we investigate the (THz) nonlinear dynamics of one such material, HgCdTe, with an electronic band dispersion heavily dependent on both temperature and stoichiometry. We show how the band gap, carrier concentration and band shape together determine the nonlinear response of the system. At low temperatures, carrier generation from Zener tunneling dominates the nonlinear response with a reduction in the overall transmission. At room temperature, quasiballistic electronic dynamics drive the largest observed nonlinear optical interactions, leading to a transmission increase. Our results demonstrate the sensitivity of these nonlinear optical properties of narrow-gap materials to small changes in the electronic dispersion and carrier concentration.

AB - Materials with linear electronic dispersion often feature high carrier mobilities and unusually strong nonlinear optical interactions. In this work, we investigate the (THz) nonlinear dynamics of one such material, HgCdTe, with an electronic band dispersion heavily dependent on both temperature and stoichiometry. We show how the band gap, carrier concentration and band shape together determine the nonlinear response of the system. At low temperatures, carrier generation from Zener tunneling dominates the nonlinear response with a reduction in the overall transmission. At room temperature, quasiballistic electronic dynamics drive the largest observed nonlinear optical interactions, leading to a transmission increase. Our results demonstrate the sensitivity of these nonlinear optical properties of narrow-gap materials to small changes in the electronic dispersion and carrier concentration.

UR - https://www.scopus.com/record/display.uri?eid=2-s2.0-85204875420&origin=inward&txGid=09df6f31284adc2d284ad6ab719fd45e

UR - https://www.mendeley.com/catalogue/ca9bc3d5-de9e-3ed5-aa50-1249053b231d/

U2 - 10.1103/physrevb.110.094303

DO - 10.1103/physrevb.110.094303

M3 - Article

VL - 110

JO - Physical Review B

JF - Physical Review B

SN - 2469-9950

IS - 9

M1 - 094303

ER -