Thermal generation of shift electric current

Abstract

It is shown that the dissipation of energy in an electron gas confined in a quantum well made of non-centrosymmetric crystal leads to a direct electric current. The current originates from the real-space shift of the wave packets of Bloch electrons at the electron scattering by phonons, which tends to restore thermal equilibrium between the electron and phonon subsystems. We develop a microscopic theory of such a phonogalvanic effect for narrow band gap zinc-blende quantum wells.

Keywords

• quantum wells
• shift current
• electron–phonon interaction
• 2d electron gas