Photoinduced anomalous supercurrent Hall effect

Abstract

We predict a photoinduced Hall effect in an isotropic conventional two-dimensional superconductor with a built-in supercurrent exposed to a circularly polarized light. This second-order with respect to the electromagnetic field amplitude effect occurs when the frequency of the field exceeds double the value of the superconducting gap. It reveals itself in the emergence of a Cooper-pair condensate flow in the direction transverse to the initial built-in supercurrent, which arises to compensate for the light-induced electric current of quasiparticles photoexcited across the gap. The initial supercurrent breaks both the time-reversal and inversion symmetries, while the presence of dilute disorder in the sample provides the breaking of the Galilean invariance. We develop a microscopic theory of the supercurrent Hall effect in the case of weak disorder and show that the Hall supercurrent is directly proportional to the quasiparticle recombination time, which can acquire large values. © 2023 American Physical Society.