Identifying different mechanisms of circular photogalvanic effect in GaAs/Al0.3Ga0.7As two dimensional electron gas by photo-modulation technique

We investigate the circular photogalvanic effect (CPGE) excited by sub-bandgap radiation in a GaAs/Al0.3Ga0.7As two dimensional electron gas and tune its amplitude by synchronously imposing an above-bandgap unpolarized light at normal incidence. With this photo-modulation technique, we identify two microscopic mechanisms of CPGE according to the dramatic change of apparent Rashba and Dresselhaus effects. We suggest the optical transitions to be Franz-Keldysh and intraband regime, respectively. Both regimes coexist in conventional CPGE and the intraband regime dominates at sufficient modulation power.