Bleaching of the terahertz magneto-photogalvanic effect in CdHgTe crystals with Kane fermions

Abstract

We report the observation and comprehensive study of the complex nonlinear intensity dependence of the magneto-photogalvanic effect (MPGE) current induced by THz radiation in CdxHg1−xTe films with inverted (x=0.15) and noninverted (x=0.22) band structures. The nonlinearities are studied for the resonant MPGE caused by cyclotron resonance, interband transitions between Landau levels, and ionization impurities, as well as for nonresonant indirect Drude-like optical transitions. We show that all these processes lead to the saturation of the photocurrent caused by absorption bleaching. We develop a theoretical framework for each mechanism, which describes measured nonlinearities over an intensity range from 10−3 to 4×104W/cm2. Furthermore, we demonstrate that the saturation processes for these absorption channels differ significantly, allowing us to analyze them independently by considering different intensity regimes. The observed nonlinearities enable us to determine the energy relaxation times of Kane fermions excited by cyclotron resonance and interband optical transitions.