The historical importance of the photoelectric effect is to demonstrate the relevance of the work function Ω. It works like this:
V ~ E_0 - Ω
where hf is the energy per photon and Ω is the work function of the target. If Ω > E_0, no voltage is produced. This provided the basis for Einstein's demonstration that energy is proportional to frequency (E_0 = hf), and won him the Nobel prize.
What does this have to do with xenon? Xenon lamps produce not only visible light, but also ultraviolet light, in fact, xenon lamps extend further into the UV than natural sunlight:
With this data we can determine that the work function of silicon (in the Raspberry Pi 2) is somewhere in the range of hc/(400 nm) < Ω < hc/(250 nm) or 3.1 eV < Ω < 5 eV. Using data from
The problem with your theory is that, as others have noted, the effect seems to happen with a red laser pointer as well.
To interfere with the electronics, the wavelength only has to as large as the band gap in silicon (as someone else has noted, around 1.1 eV). This means that IR light (and all visible light) can cause the interference too.
A strong enough light source will lift a lot of electrons from the valence band across the band gap into the conduction band, effectively turning a transistor into a conductor for the duration of the flash. Since the sensitive part seems to be related to the power supply, it's quite plausible that this leads to the voltage fluctuations on the power rail.
V ~ E_0 - Ω
where hf is the energy per photon and Ω is the work function of the target. If Ω > E_0, no voltage is produced. This provided the basis for Einstein's demonstration that energy is proportional to frequency (E_0 = hf), and won him the Nobel prize.
What does this have to do with xenon? Xenon lamps produce not only visible light, but also ultraviolet light, in fact, xenon lamps extend further into the UV than natural sunlight:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenon_arc_lamp#mediaviewer/File...
LEDs by contrast produce almost no UV light:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light-emitting_diode#mediaviewe...
With this data we can determine that the work function of silicon (in the Raspberry Pi 2) is somewhere in the range of hc/(400 nm) < Ω < hc/(250 nm) or 3.1 eV < Ω < 5 eV. Using data from
http://journals.aps.org/pr/abstract/10.1103/PhysRev.127.150
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/00223697599...
we see that the work function of silicon is around 4.7-4.9 eV, which agrees well with our observations.
draws a little box