No Arabic abstract
With a combination of numerical methods, including quantum Monte Carlo, exact diagonalization, and a simplified dynamical mean-field model, we consider the attosecond charge dynamics of electrons induced by strong-field laser pulses in two-dimensional Mott insulators. The necessity to go beyond single-particle approaches in these strongly correlated systems has made the simulation of two-dimensional extended materials challenging, and we contrast their resulting high-harmonic emission with more widely studied one-dimensional analogues. As well as considering the photo-induced breakdown of the Mott insulating state and magnetic order, we also resolve the time and ultra-high frequency domains of emission, which are used to characterize both the photo-transition, and the sub-cycle structure of the electron dynamics. This extends simulation capabilities and understanding of the photo-melting of these Mott insulators in two-dimensions, at the frontier of attosecond non-equilibrium science of correlated materials.
Using Floquet dynamical mean-field theory, we study the high-harmonic generation in the time-periodic steady states of wide-gap Mott insulators under AC driving. In the strong-field regime, the harmonic intensity exhibits multiple plateaus, whose cutoff energies $epsilon_{rm cut} = U + mE_0$ scale with the Coulomb interaction $U$ and the maximum field strength $E_0$. In this regime, the created doublons and holons are localized because of the strong field and the $m$-th plateau originates from the recombination of $m$-th nearest-neighbor doublon-holon pairs. In the weak-field regime, there is only a single plateau in the intensity, which originates from the recombination of itinerant doublons and holons. Here, $epsilon_{rm cut} = Delta_{rm gap} + alpha E_0$, with $Delta_{rm gap}$ the band gap and $alpha>1$. We demonstrate that the Mott insulator shows a stronger high-harmonic intensity than a semiconductor model with the same dispersion as the Mott insulator, even if the semiconductor bands are broadened by impurity scattering to mimic the incoherent scattering in the Mott insulator.
We study the high harmonic generation (HHG) in Mott insulators using Floquet dynamical mean-field theory (DMFT). We show that the main origin of the HHG in Mott insulators is the doublon-holon recombination, and that the character of the HHG spectrum differs depending on the field strength. In the weaker-field regime, the HHG spectrum shows a single plateau as in the HHG from gases, and its cut-off energy $epsilon_{rm cut}$ scales linearly with the field strength $E_0$ as $epsilon_{rm cut}=Delta_{rm gap} + alpha E_0$, where $Delta_{rm gap}$ is the Mott gap. On the other hand, in the stronger-field regime, multiple plateaus emerge and the $m$-th cut-off scales as $epsilon_{rm cut,m}=U + m E_0$. We show that this difference originates from the different dynamics of the doublons and holons in the weak- and strong-field regimes. We also comment on the similarities and differences between HHG from Mott insulators and from semiconductors. This proceedings paper complements our recent work, Phys. Rev. Lett. 121, 057405 (2018), with additional results and analyses.
We study high-harmonic generation (HHG) in the one-dimensional Hubbard model in order to understand its relation to elementary excitations as well as the similarities and differences to semiconductors. The simulations are based on the infinite time-evolving block decimation (iTEBD) method and exact diagonalization. We clarify that the HHG originates from the doublon-holon recombination, and the scaling of the cutoff frequency is consistent with a linear dependence on the external field. We demonstrate that the subcycle features of the HHG can be reasonably described by a phenomenological three step model for a doublon-holon pair. We argue that the HHG in the one-dimensional Mott insulator is closely related to the dispersion of the doublon-holon pair with respect to its relative momentum, which is not necessarily captured by the single-particle spectrum due to the many-body nature of the elementary excitations. For the comparison to semiconductors, we introduce effective models obtained from the Schrieffer-Wolff transformation, i.e. a strong-coupling expansion, which allows us to disentangle the different processes involved in the Hubbard model: intraband dynamics of doublons and holons, interband dipole excitations, and spin exchanges. These demonstrate the formal similarity of the Mott system to the semiconductor models in the dipole gauge, and reveal that the spin dynamics, which does not directly affect the charge dynamics, can reduce the HHG intensity. We also show that the long-range component of the intraband dipole moment has a substantial effect on the HHG intensity, while the correlated hopping terms for the doublons and holons essentially determine the shape of the HHG spectrum. A new numerical method to evaluate single-particle spectra within the iTEBD method is also introduced.
The high harmonic spectrum of the Mott insulating Hubbard model has recently been shown to exhibit plateau structures with cutoff energies determined by $n$th nearest neighbor doublon-holon recombination processes. The spectrum thus allows to extract the on-site repulsion $U$. Here, we consider generalizations of the single-band Hubbard model and discuss the signatures of bosonic excitations in high harmonic spectra. Specifically, we study an electron-plasmon model which captures the essential aspects of the dynamically screened Coulomb interaction in solids and a multi-orbital Hubbard model with Hund coupling which allows to analyze the effect of local spin excitations. For the electron-plasmon model, we show that the high harmonic spectrum can reveal information about the screened and bare onsite interaction, the boson frequency, as well as the relation between boson coupling strength and boson frequency. In the multi-orbital case, string states formed by local spin excitations result in an increase of the radiation intensity and cutoff energy associated with higher order recombination processes.
We study third-harmonic generation (THG) in an excitonic insulator (EI) described in a two-band correlated electron model. Employing the perturbative expansion with respect to the external electric field, we derive the THG susceptibility taking into account the collective dynamics of the excitonic order parameter. In the inversion-symmetric EI, the collective order parameter motion is activated at second order of the external field and its effects arise in THG. We find three peaks in the THG susceptibility at energies $hbar Omega = Delta_g/3$, $Delta_g/2$, and $Delta_g$, where $Delta_g$ is the bandgap. While the THG response at $Delta_g/3$ is caused by three-photon excitation of the independent particle across the bandgap, the latter two peaks involve the effects of the collective motion activated at second order. The resulting resonant peaks are prominent in particular in the BCS regime but they become less significant in the BEC regime. We demonstrate that the resonant peaks originated by the collective excitations are observable in the temperature profile of the THG intensity. Our study suggests that the THG measurement should be promising for detecting the excitonic collective nature of materials.