Abstract

Excitation of an alternating through current inside a photoconductive crystal illuminated by an. oscillating interference patυβrn was first- observed in 1986 [1). It is caused by a time-dependent phase shift between the free carrier and space charge field distributions.. Investiga tions of this current give information about such important parameters of the light-induced charge transfer as the sign of ths charge carriei3, diffusion length, M-xwell relaxation time, free charge carrier lifetime, etc. Originally this so-called "non-steady-state photocurrent technique was proposed to characterize the sillenite type crystals (BSO). Later it was used for investigation of semiconductor GaAs [2] and ferroelectric EaTiOj [3] crystals. In this contribution we report the first, to our knowledge, results of the study of the non-steady-state photocurrent ir the presence of an external magnetic field.

© 1993 Optical Society of America