Nonequilibrium dynamics in pumped Mott insulators

TL;DR

This paper investigates the nonequilibrium behavior of pumped Mott insulators using advanced numerical methods to analyze photoemission spectra and magnetic properties, revealing a photoinduced insulator-to-metal transition driven by $$ pairing.

Contribution

It introduces a numerical approach for calculating time-dependent spectra in infinite 1D systems, demonstrating its application to the Hubbard chain under optical pumping.

Findings

Observation of insulator-to-metal transition via $$ pairing formation.

Spectral weight loss in spin structure factor indicating suppressed antiferromagnetism.

Method applicable to other driven one-dimensional quantum systems.

Abstract

We use time-evolution techniques for (infinite) matrix-product-states to calculate, directly in the thermodynamic limit, the time-dependent photoemission spectra and dynamic structure factors of the half-filled Hubbard chain after pulse irradiation. These quantities exhibit clear signatures of the photoinduced phase transition from insulator to metal that occurs because of the formation of so-called $\eta$ pairs. In addition, the spin dynamic structure factor loses spectral weight in the whole momentum space, reflecting the suppression of antiferromagnetic correlations due to the buildup of $\eta$-pairing states. The numerical method demonstrated in this work can be readily applied to other one-dimensional models driven out of equilibrium by optical pumping.