Role of Coulomb interaction in the valley photogalvanic effect

Abstract

We develop a theory of Coulomb interaction-related contribution to the photogalvanic current of the carriers of charge in two-dimensional non-centrosymmetric Dirac materials possessing a nontrivial structure of valleys and exposed to an external electromagnetic field. The valley photogalvanic effect occurs here due to the trigonal warping of electrons and holes' dispersions in a given valley of the monolayer. We study the low-frequency limit of the external field: The field frequency is smaller than the temperature $T$, and the electron-electron and electron-hole scattering times are much larger than the electron-impurity and hole-impurity scattering times. In this regime, we employ the Boltzmann transport equations and show that electron-hole scattering dominates electron-electron scattering in intrinsic semiconductors. A Coulomb electron-hole interaction-related contribution to the valley photogalvanic current can reduce the value of the bare photogalvanic current as electron and hole currents flow in opposite directions.