Phonon state tomography of electron correlation dynamics in optically excited solids

TL;DR

This paper introduces phonon state tomography (PST), a new method to diagnose electron dynamics in solids through phonon responses, enabling electronic behavior reconstruction from phonon measurements.

Contribution

The paper develops PST using matrix-product states to reconstruct electronic dynamics from phonon responses in optically excited solids, a novel diagnostic approach.

Findings

PST accurately reconstructs electronic correlations from phonon data.

Simulations show PST can analyze effects of different pulse shapes on electron correlations.

PST can be applied to experimental phonon measurements like x-ray and electron scattering.

Abstract

We introduce phonon state tomography (PST) as a diagnostic probe of electron dynamics in solids whose phonons are optically excited by a laser pulse at initial time. Using a projected-purified matrix-product states algorithm, PST decomposes the exact correlated electron-phonon wavefunction into contributions from purely electronic states corresponding to statistically typical configurations of the optically accessible phononic response, enabling a 'tomographic' reconstruction of the electronic dynamics generated by the phonons. Thus, PST may be used to diagnose electronic behavior in experiments that access only the phonon response, such as thermal diffuse x-ray and electron scattering. We study the dynamics of a metal whose infrared phonons are excited by an optical pulse at initial time and use it to simulate the sample-averaged momentum-resolved phonon occupancy and accurately reconstruct the electronic correlations. We also use PST to analyze the influence of different pulse shapes on the light-induced enhancement and suppression of electronic correlations.