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Updated: Jul 18, 2026

Recombination Dynamics in Thin-film Photovoltaic Materials via Time-resolved Microwave Conductivity
Published on: March 6, 2017
Photovoltaic current response of mesoscopic conductors to quantized cavity modes
Maxim G Vavilov1, A Douglas Stone
1Department of Applied Physics, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut 06520, USA.
Abstract:
We extend the analysis of the effects of electromagnetic (EM) fields on mesoscopic conductors to include the effects of field quantization, motivated by recent experiments on circuit QED. We show that in general there is a photovoltaic (PV) current induced by quantized cavity modes at zero bias across the conductor. This current depends on the average photon occupation number and vanishes identically when it is equal to the average number of thermal electron-hole pairs. We analyze in detail the case of a chaotic quantum dot at temperature Te in contact with a thermal EM field at temperature Tf, calculating the rms size of the PV current as a function of the temperature difference, finding an effect approximately pA.
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