Valley and electric photocurrents in 2D silicon and graphene

We show that the optical excitation of multi-valley systems leads to valley currents which depend on the light polarization. The net electric current, determined by the vector sum of single-valley contributions, vanishes for some peculiar distributions of carriers in the valley and momentum spaces forming a pure valley current. We report on the study of this phenomenon, both experimental and theoretical, for graphene and 2D electron channels on the silicon surface.