Photoinduced prethermalization phenomena in correlated metals

TL;DR

This paper investigates how weakly interacting Hubbard systems exhibit prethermalization after electric-field pump pulses, revealing scaling behaviors and methods to generate and identify non-thermal states.

Contribution

It introduces a novel analysis of prethermalization in Hubbard models under finite-duration electric pulses, including second-order interaction effects and non-linear electric field responses.

Findings

Scaling behavior with pulse duration observed in absorbed energy

Non-thermal momentum distributions can be generated with resonant pump pulses

Distinct signatures allow differentiation from thermal states

Abstract

We study prethermalization phenomena in weakly interacting Hubbard systems after electric-field pump pulses with finite duration. We treat the Hubbard interaction up to second order, applying the prethermalization paradigm for time-dependent interaction protocols, and the electric field strength beyond linear order. A scaling behavior with pulse duration is observed for the absorbed energy as well as individual prethermalized momentum occupation numbers, which we attribute to the leading quadratic orders in interaction and electric field. We show that a pronounced non-thermal momentum distribution can be created with pump pulses of suitable resonance frequencies, and discuss how to distinguish them from thermal states.