No Arabic abstract
We develop a stochastic theory that treats time-dependent exciton-exciton s-wave scattering and that accounts for dynamic Coulomb screening, which we describe within a mean-field limit. With this theory, we model excitation-induced dephasing effects on time-resolved two-dimensional coherent optical lineshapes and we identify a number of features that can be attributed to the many-body dynamics occurring in the background of the exciton, including dynamic line narrowing, mixing of real and imaginary spectral components, and multi-quantum states. We test the model by means of multidimensional coherent spectroscopy on a two-dimensional metal-halide semiconductor that hosts tightly bound excitons and biexcitons that feature strong polaronic character. We find that the exciton nonlinear coherent lineshape reflects many-body correlations that give rise to excitation-induced dephasing. Furthermore, we observe that the exciton lineshape evolves with population time over time windows in which the population itself is static, in a manner that reveals the evolution of the multi-exciton many-body couplings. Specifically, the dephasing dynamics slow down with time, at a rate that is governed by the strength of exciton many-body interactions and on the dynamic Coulomb screening potential. The real part of the coherent optical lineshape displays strong dispersive character at zero time, which transforms to an absorptive lineshape on the dissipation timescale of excitation-induced dephasing effects, while the imaginary part displays converse behavior. Our microscopic theoretical approach is sufficiently flexible to allow for a wide exploration of how system-bath dynamics contribute to linear and non-linear time-resolved spectral behavior.
In this paper we present a quantum stochastic model for spectroscopic line-shapes in the presence of a co-evolving and non-stationary background population of excitations. Starting from a field theory description for interacting bosonic excitons, we derive a reduced model whereby optical excitons are coupled to an incoherent background via scattering as mediated by their screened Coulomb coupling. The Heisenberg equations of motion for the optical excitons are then driven by an auxiliary stochastic population variable, which we take to be the solution of an Ornstein-Uhlenbeck process. It^os Lemma then allows us to easily construct and evaluate correlation functions and response functions. Focusing on the linear response, we compare our model to the classic Anderson-Kubo model. While similar in motivation, there are profound differences in the predicted lineshapes, notably in terms of asymmetry, and variation with increasing background population.
Fully-inorganic cesium lead halide perovskite nanocrystals (NCs) have shown to exhibit outstanding optical properties such as wide spectral tunability, high quantum yield, high oscillator strength as well as blinking-free single photon emission and low spectral diffusion. Here, we report measurements of the coherent and incoherent exciton dynamics on the 100 fs to 10 ns timescale, determining dephasing and density decay rates in these NCs. The experiments are performed on CsPbBr$_{2}$Cl NCs using transient resonant three-pulse four-wave mixing (FWM) in heterodyne detection at temperatures ranging from 5 K to 50 K. We found a low-temperature exciton dephasing time of 24.5$pm$1.0 ps, inferred from the decay of the photon-echo amplitude at 5 K, corresponding to a homogeneous linewidth (FWHM) of 54$pm$5 {mu}eV. Furthermore, oscillations in the photon-echo signal on a picosecond timescale are observed and attributed to coherent coupling of the exciton to a quantized phonon mode with 3.45 meV energy.
We analyze possible nonlinear exciton-exciton correlation effects in the optical response of semiconductors by using a time-dependent density-functional theory (TDDFT) approach. For this purpose, we derive the nonlinear (third-order) TDDFT equation for the excitonic polarization. In this equation, the nonlinear time-dependent effects are described by the time-dependent (non-adiabatic) part of the effective exciton-exciton interaction, which depends on the exchange-correlation (XC) kernel. We apply the approach to study the nonlinear optical response of a GaAs quantum well. In particular, we calculate the 2D Fourier spectra of the system and compare it with experimental data. We find that it is necessary to use a non-adiabatic XC kernel to describe excitonic bound states - biexcitons, which are formed due to the retarded TDDFT exciton-exciton interaction.
We present a new release of the turboTDDFT code featuring an implementation of hybrid functionals, a recently introduced pseudo-Hermitian variant of the Liouville-Lanczos approach to time-dependent density-functional perturbation theory, and a newly developed Davidson-like algorithm to compute selected interior eigenvalues/vectors of the Liouvillian super-operator. Our implementation is thoroughly validated against benchmark calculations performed on the cyanin (C$_{21}$O$_{11}$H$_{21}$) molecule using the Gaussian09 and turboTDDFT 1.0 codes.
We report the first coherent excitation of intramolecular vibrational modes via the nonlinear interaction of a TeraHertz (THz) light field with molecular liquids. A terahertz-terahertz-Raman pulse sequence prepares the coherences with a broadband, high-energy, (sub)picosecond terahertz pulse, that are then measured in a terahertz Kerr effect spectrometer via phase-sensitive, heterodyne detection with an optical pulse. The spectrometer reported here has broader terahertz frequency coverage, and an increased sensitivity relative to previously reported terahertz Kerr effect experiments. Vibrational coherences are observed in liquid diiodomethane at 3.66 THz (122 cm$^{-1}$), and in carbon tetrachloride at 6.50 THz (217 cm$^{-1}$), in exact agreement with literature values of those intramolecular modes. This work opens the door to 2D spectroscopies, nonlinear in terahertz field, that can study the dynamics of condensed-phase molecular systems, as well as coherent control at terahertz frequencies.