Spontaneous Symmetry Breaking and Collective Higgs-Goldstone Dynamics in Solid-State Phononic Frequency Combs

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates how nonlinear interactions between Higgs-like and Goldstone-like phonon modes in a solid-state material can generate tunable phononic frequency combs, revealing threshold behaviors and controllability through external parameters.

Contribution

It introduces a nonlinear phononics model to analyze Higgs-Goldstone phonon coupling and identifies conditions for stable, tunable phononic frequency comb generation in symmetry-broken materials.

Findings

Threshold behavior for comb formation.

Tunable comb spacing and bandwidth.

Breakdown of coherence at high drive or low damping.

Abstract

We investigate the generation of phononic frequency combs arising from nonlinear coupling between Higgs-like and Goldstone-like phonon modes in hexagonal InMnO3. The Higgs-like mode, an infrared-active optical phonon, is resonantly driven by a short, high-electric field terahertz pulse, while the optically inactive Goldstone-like mode is indirectly excited through intrinsic nonlinear mode coupling. Using a nonlinear phononics model, we numerically solve the coupled equations of motion governing the lattice dynamics and analyze the resulting time- and frequency-domain responses. By systematically varying key drive and material parameters-including electric field amplitude, pulse width, driving frequency, and mode damping-we identify the conditions under which stable phononic frequency combs emerge. Our results reveal clear threshold behaviors for comb formation, tunability of comb spacing and spectral bandwidth through external control parameters, and a breakdown of coherent comb structure at high drive strengths or weak damping. These findings demonstrate how nonlinear Higgs-Goldstone interactions enable controllable phononic frequency comb generation and provide insight into ultrafast lattice dynamics in symmetry-broken materials.