Phys.org May 11, 2022
Recently it was experimentally demonstrated that strong non-resonant few-cycle laser pulses can be used to induce phase-controllable currents along gold–silica–gold nanojunctions in the absence of a bias voltage. Since the effect depends on a highly non-equilibrium state of matter, its microscopic origin is unclear and the subject of recent controversy. An international team of researchers (Germany, USA – SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, University of Rochester, Georgia State University, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Canada) has presented atomistically detailed electronic transport simulations that recover the main experimental observations and offered a simple intuitive picture of the effect. The photoinduced currents are seen to arise due to a difference in effective silica-metal coupling for negative and positive field amplitudes induced by lasers with low temporal symmetry. These insights can be employed to interpret related experiments and advance our ability to control electrons in matter using lasers…read more. TECHNICAL ARTICLE 1 , 2 , 3 , Open Access  4
Role of real and virtual charge carriers in current generation. Credit: Nature volume 605, pages251–255 (2022)Â