Zero-Point Renormalization Reshapes the Shift Current: The Role of Electron-Phonon Coupling
Abstract
Shift current (SC) drives the bulk photovoltaic effect, holding promise for near-instantaneous, low-dissipation photodetection and energy conversion. The current understanding of SC relies primarily on a single-particle picture, in which the SC is determined purely by band dispersion. While many-body effects from directly excited quasiparticles, such as excitons, magnons and phonons, have been explored, the renormalization of electronic states by quantum virtual-phonon coupling --- inherent in essentially all solids and particularly decisive for transport --- remains unaddressed. Here, using first-principles calculations, we identify this missing channel --- band-renormalized shift current (BRSC) --- in monolayer MoS2. We find that the zero-point renormalization alone, without any polarization-carrying photoexcited phonons and with barely any alteration of the band dispersion, dramatically reshapes the SC spectrum: emergent low-energy peaks arise from phonon-assisted optical transitions between momentum-distinct states, with a pronounced redshift of higher-energy features. A mere 1.0% strain sharply tunes the BRSC, whereas raising the temperature enhances it. Our findings overturn the band-structure-only paradigm, establishing electron-phonon coupling as an indispensable ingredient for nonlinear photocurrent and opening a strain-thermal route for engineering next-generation optoelectronic responses.
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BibTeX
@misc{li2026zeropoint,
title = {{Zero-Point Renormalization Reshapes the Shift Current: The Role of Electron-Phonon Coupling}},
author = {Yang Li and Zuzhang Lin and Zhikuan Wang and Chengzhi Wu and Zeyu Jiang and Bing Huang},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = nov,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2611.08019},
eprint = {2611.08019},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2611.08019},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Zero-Point Renormalization Reshapes the Shift Current: The Role of Electron-Phonon Coupling
AU - Yang Li
AU - Zuzhang Lin
AU - Zhikuan Wang
AU - Chengzhi Wu
AU - Zeyu Jiang
AU - Bing Huang
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/11/05
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2611.08019
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2611.08019
AB - Shift current (SC) drives the bulk photovoltaic effect, holding promise for near-instantaneous, low-dissipation photodetection and energy conversion. The current understanding of SC relies primarily on a single-particle picture, in which the SC is determined purely by band dispersion. While many-body effects from directly excited quasiparticles, such as excitons, magnons and phonons, have been explored, the renormalization of electronic states by quantum virtual-phonon coupling --- inherent in essentially all solids and particularly decisive for transport --- remains unaddressed. Here, using first-principles calculations, we identify this missing channel --- band-renormalized shift current (BRSC) --- in monolayer MoS2. We find that the zero-point renormalization alone, without any polarization-carrying photoexcited phonons and with barely any alteration of the band dispersion, dramatically reshapes the SC spectrum: emergent low-energy peaks arise from phonon-assisted optical transitions between momentum-distinct states, with a pronounced redshift of higher-energy features. A mere 1.0% strain sharply tunes the BRSC, whereas raising the temperature enhances it. Our findings overturn the band-structure-only paradigm, establishing electron-phonon coupling as an indispensable ingredient for nonlinear photocurrent and opening a strain-thermal route for engineering next-generation optoelectronic responses.
ER -