Photo-induced directional transport in extended SSH chains

Abstract

We investigate the current-voltage characteristics of an extended Su-Schrieffer-Heeger (SSH) chain under irradiation by arbitrarily polarized light, demonstrating its potential as a light-controlled rectifier. Irradiation of light induces anisotropy in the system, enabling directional current flow and active control of rectification behavior. Our analysis demonstrates that, under optimized light parameters, the rectification efficiency can exceed 90\%. Moreover, the direction of rectification-whether positive or negative-can be precisely controlled by varying the polarization of the light, highlighting the potential for external optical control of electronic behavior. The effect of light irradiation is incorporated using the Floquet-Bloch ansatz combined with the minimal coupling scheme, while charge transport is computed through the nonequilibrium Green's function formalism within the Landauer-B\"{u}ttiker framework.