X-Ray Scattering from Light-Driven Spin Fluctuations in a Doped Mott Insulator

TL;DR

This study investigates how ultrafast laser pulses influence spin excitations in doped Mott insulators, revealing transient changes in magnetic interactions and their connection to superconductivity using time-resolved x-ray scattering.

Contribution

It provides a microscopic, momentum-resolved analysis of nonequilibrium spin dynamics in Mott insulators, highlighting differences between doped and half-filled systems and linking spin fluctuations to pairing correlations.

Findings

Ultrafast pump causes prompt softening of spin excitation energy.

Paramagnons in doped systems follow Floquet theory, unlike magnons at half filling.

Ultrafast suppression of d-wave pairing correlations observed.

Abstract

Manipulating spin fluctuations with ultrafast laser pulses is a promising route to dynamically control collective phenomena in strongly correlated materials. However, understanding how photoexcited spin degrees of freedom evolve at a microscopic level requires a momentum- and energy-resolved characterization of their nonequilibrium dynamics. Here, we study the photoinduced dynamics of finite-momentum spin excitations in two-dimensional Mott insulators on a square lattice. By calculating the time-resolved resonant inelastic x-ray scattering cross-section, we show that an ultrafast pump above the Mott gap induces a prompt softening of the spin excitation energy, compatible with a transient renormalization of the exchange interaction. While spin fluctuations in a hole-doped system (paramagnons) are well described by Floquet theory, magnons at half filling are found to deviate from this picture. Furthermore, we show that the paramagnon softening is accompanied by an ultrafast suppression of $d$-wave pairing correlations, indicating a link between the transient spin excitation dynamics and superconducting pairing far from equilibrium.