Transverse Chiral Magnetic Photocurrent Induced by Linearly Polarized Light in Symmetric Weyl Semimetals

A new class of photocurrents is predicted to occur in both type-I and type-II Weyl semimetals. Unlike the previously studied photocurrents in chiral materials, the proposed current requires neither circularly polarized light, nor an absence of symmetry with respect to a plane of reflection. We show that if a Weyl semimetal has a broken inversion symmetry then linearly polarized light can induce a photocurrent transverse to the direction of an applied magnetic field, in spite of the symmetry with respect to a reflection plane and the time reversal symmetry. The class of materials in which we expect this to occur is sufficiently broad and includes the transition metal monopnictides such as TaAs. The effect stems from the dynamics of Weyl chiral quasi-particles in a magnetic field, restricted by the symmetries described above; because the resulting current is transverse to the direction of magnetic field, we call it the transverse chiral magnetic photocurrent. The magnitude of the resulting photocurrent is predicted to be very large in the THz frequency range, about $75\; \mathrm{\mu A}$ for type-I and $250\; \mathrm{\mu A}$ for type-II Weyl semimetals. This opens the possibility to utilize the predicted transverse chiral magnetic photocurrent for sensing unpolarized THz radiation.