Optically induced delocalization of electrons bound by attractive potentials

TL;DR

This paper shows that a circularly polarized off-resonant electromagnetic field can cause bound electrons in attractive potentials to delocalize by altering the potential landscape's topology, with implications for condensed matter systems.

Contribution

It introduces a novel mechanism where optical fields induce electron delocalization by topological changes in the potential landscape, expanding understanding of light-matter interactions.

Findings

Electromagnetic fields can destroy bound electron states.

Topological changes in potentials lead to electron delocalization.

Potential landscape topology is crucial for electron localization.

Abstract

Within the Floquet theory of periodically driven quantum systems, we demonstrate that a circularly polarized off-resonant electromagnetic field can destroy the electron states bound by three-dimensional attractive potentials. As a consequence, the optically induced delocalization of bound electrons appears. The effect arises from the changing of topological structure of a potential landscape under a circularly polarized off-resonant electromagnetic field which turns simply connected potentials into doubly connected ones. Possible manifestations of the effect are discussed for conduction electrons in condensed-matter structures.