Role of crystal orientation in attosecond photoinjection dynamics of germanium

Abstract

Understanding photoinjection in semiconductors—a fundamental physical process—represents the first step toward devising new opto-electronic devices, capable of operating on unprecedented time scales. Fostered by the development of few-femtosecond, intense infrared pulses, and attosecond spectroscopy techniques, ultrafast charge injection in solids has been the subject of intense theoretical and experimental investigation. Recent results have shown that while under certain conditions photoinjection can be ascribed to a single, well-defined phenomenon, in a realistic multi-band semiconductor like Ge, several competing mechanisms determine the sub-cycle interaction of an intense light field with the atomic and electronic structure of matter. In this latter case, it is yet unclear how the complex balance between the different physical mechanisms is altered by the chosen interaction geometry, dictated by the relative orientation between the crystal lattice and the laser electric field direction. In this work, we investigate ultrafast photoinjection in a Ge monocrystalline sample with attosecond temporal resolution under two distinct orientations. Our combined theoretical and experimental effort suggests that the physical mechanisms determining carrier excitation in Ge are largely robust against crystal rotation. Nevertheless, the different alignment between the laser field and the crystal unit cell causes non-negligible changes in the momentum distribution of the excited carriers and their injection yield. Further experiments are needed to clarify whether the crystal orientation can be used to tune the photoinjection of carriers in a semiconductor at these extreme time scales.