Correlation tuned cross-over between thermal and nonthermal states following ultrafast transient pumping

We examine electron-electron mediated relaxation following excitation of a correlated system by an ultrafast electric field pump pulse. The results reveal a dichotomy in the temporal evolution as one tunes through a Mott metal-to-insulator transition: in the metallic regime relaxation can be characterized by evolution toward a steady-state electronic distribution well described by Fermi-Dirac statistics with an increased effective temperature; however, in the insulating regime this quasithermal paradigm breaks down with relaxation toward a nonthermal state with a more complicated electronic distribution that does not vary monotonically as a function of energy. We characterize the behavior by studying changes in the energy, photoemission response, and electronic distribution as functions of time. Qualitatively these results should be observable on short enough time scales that the electrons behave like an isolated system not in contact with additional degrees of freedom which can act as a thermal bath. Importantly, proper modeling used to analyze experimental findings should account for this behavior, especially when using strong driving fields or studying materials whose physics may manifest the effects of strong correlations.Comment: Main Text: 5 pages, 4 figures; Supplementary Material: 3 pages, 5 figure

Examining electron-boson coupling using time-resolved spectroscopy

Nonequilibrium pump-probe time domain spectroscopies can become an important tool to disentangle degrees of freedom whose coupling leads to broad structures in the frequency domain. Here, using the time-resolved solution of a model photoexcited electron-phonon system we show that the relaxational dynamics are directly governed by the equilibrium self-energy so that the phonon frequency sets a window for "slow" versus "fast" recovery. The overall temporal structure of this relaxation spectroscopy allows for a reliable and quantitative extraction of the electron-phonon coupling strength without requiring an effective temperature model or making strong assumptions about the underlying bare electronic band dispersion.Comment: 23 pages, 4 figures + Supplementary Material and movies, to appear in PR

Time-Resolved Photoemission of Correlated Electrons Driven Out of Equilibrium

We describe the temporal evolution of the time-resolved photoemission response of the spinless Falicov-Kimball model driven out of equilibrium by strong, applied fields. The model is one of the few possessing a metal-insulator transition and admitting an exact solution in the time domain. The nonequilibrium dynamics, evaluated using an extension of dynamical mean-field theory, show how the driven system differs from two common viewpoints - a quasi-equilibrium system at an elevated, effective temperature (the 'hot' electron model) or a rapid interaction quench ('melting' of the Mott gap) - due to the rearrangement of electronic states and redistribution of spectral weight. The results demonstrate the inherent trade-off between energy and time resolution accompanying the finite width probe-pulses, characteristic of those employed in pump-probe, time-domain experiments, which can be used to focus attention on different aspects of the dynamics near the transition

Temporal Response of Nonequilibrium Correlated Electrons

In this work we examine the time-resolved, instantaneous current response for the spinless Falicov-Kimball model at half-filling, on both sides of the Mott-Hubbard metal-insulator transition, driven by a strong electric field pump pulse. The results are obtained using an exact, nonequilibrium, many-body impurity solution specifically designed to treat the out-of-equilibrium evolution of electrons in time-dependent fields. We provide a brief introduction to the method and its computational details. We find that the current develops Bloch oscillations, similar to the case of DC driving fields, with an additional amplitude modulation, characterized by beats and induced by correlation effects. Correlations primarily manifest themselves through an overall reduction in magnitude and shift in the onset time of the current response with increasing interaction strength