High-harmonic generation in Mott insulators

Murakami, Yuta; Eckstein, Martin; Werner, Philipp

doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.121.057405

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Journal article

High-harmonic generation in Mott insulators

Murakami, Yuta Department of Physics, University of Fribourg, Switzerland
Eckstein, Martin Department of Physics, University of Erlangen-Nürnberg, Erlangen, Germany
Werner, Philipp Department of Physics, University of Fribourg, Switzerland

02.08.2018

Published in:

Physical Review Letters. - 2018, vol. 121, no. 5, p. 057405

English Using Floquet dynamical mean-field theory, we study the high-harmonic generation in the time-periodic steady states of wide-gap Mott insulators under ac driving. In the strong-field regime, the harmonic intensity exhibits multiple plateaus, whose cutoff energies εcut=U+mE0 scale with the Coulomb interaction U and the maximum field strength E0. In this regime, the created doublons and holons are localized because of the strong field and the mth plateau originates from the recombination of mth nearest- neighbor doublon-holon pairs. In the weak-field regime, there is only a single plateau in the intensity, which originates from the recombination of itinerant doublons and holons. Here, εcut=Δgap+αE0, with Δgap the band gap and α>1. We demonstrate that the Mott insulator shows a stronger high-harmonic intensity than a semiconductor model with the same dispersion as the Mott insulator, even if the semiconductor bands are broadened by impurity scattering to mimic the incoherent scattering in the Mott insulator.

Faculty

Faculté des sciences et de médecine

Department

Département de Physique

Language