Photocontrol of Dirac electrons in a bulk Rashba semiconductor

We demonstrate the generation of circularly polarized light induced current of bulk Dirac electrons at room temperature by exploiting a giant Rashba effect in a bulk semiconductor. The photocurrent is spin polarized due to the spin-momentum locking of the electronic states, which is manifested by a sign reversal upon flipping either the photon helicity or the sign of the Rashba parameter, without any stray current. The action spectra revealed the photon energy range, where the photocurrent is carried by the Dirac electrons at the inner Fermi surface. This photogalvanic control is enabled by the sizable spin splittings both at the valence and conduction bands with the same helicity, and also by a number of optical transition pathways compared to those in the two-dimensional Rashba systems. An efficient coupling between the photon field and large spin-orbit interaction is accordingly proposed to allow the universal control of Dirac electrons.