Spectral dependence of circular photocurrent in silver-palladium resistive films

The exposure of silver-palladium (Ag-Pd) resistive films to obliquely incident nanosecond pulsed laser radiation with wavelengths of 1064, 532, 354.7, and 266 nm leads to the appearance of a photo-current dependent on the sign of the circular polarization of incident radiation (circular photocurrent). The photocurrent was determined by measuring pulsed photo-emf in a longitudinal geometry for which the plane of laser-radiation incidence onto the film was parallel to the electrodes. It is established that the response signal changes its sign with that of the angle of incidence, significantly decreases with the laser-radiation frequency, and consists of linear and circular contributions. The ratio of the circular to linear signal components significantly decreases with decreasing radiation wavelength. The obtained results can be used for the creation and development of a device capable of determining the sign of polarization of laser radiation.