  In metallic noncentrosymmetric crystals and at surfaces the response of spin
currents and charge currents to applied electric fields contains contributions
that are second order in the electric field, which are forbidden by symmetry in
centrosymmetric systems. Thereby, photocurrents and spin photocurrents can be
generated in inversion asymmetric metals by the application of femtosecond
laser pulses. We study the laser-induced charge current in the ferromagnetic
Rashba model with in-plane magnetization and find that this \textit{magnetic
photogalvanic effect} can be tuned to be comparable in size to the
laser-induced photocurrents measured experimentally in magnetic bilayer systems
such as Co/Pt. Additionally, we show that femtosecond laser pulses excite
strong spin currents in the nonmagnetic Rashba model when the Rashba parameter
is large.
