Ultra-fast spectroscopy can reveal the interplay of charges with low energy degrees of freedom, which underlies the rich physics of correlated materials. As a potential glue for superconductivity, spin fluctuations in Mott insulators are of particular interest. A theoretical description of the coupled spin and charge degrees of freedom is challenging, because magnetic order is often only short-lived and short-ranged. In this work we theoretically investigate how the spin-charge interactions influence the relaxation of a two-dimensional Mott-Hubbard insulator after photo-excitation. We use a nonequilibrium variant of the dynamical cluster approximation, which, in contrast to single-site dynamical mean-field theory, captures the effect of short-range correlations. The relaxation time is found to scale with the strength of the nearest-neighbor spin correlations, and can be 10-20 fs in the cuprates. Increasing the temperature or excitation density decreases the spin correlations and thus implies longer relaxation times. This may help to distinguish the effect of spin-fluctuations on the charge relaxation from the influence of other bosonic modes in the solid.
Ultra-fast spectroscopy can reveal the interplay of charges with low energy degrees of freedom, which underlies the rich physics of correlated materials. As a potential glue for superconductivity, spin fluctuations in Mott insulators are of particular interest. A theoretical description of the coupled spin and charge degrees of freedom is challenging, because magnetic order is often only short-lived and short-ranged. In this work we theoretically investigate how the spin-charge interactions influence the relaxation of a two-dimensional Mott-Hubbard insulator after photo-excitation. We use a nonequilibrium variant of the dynamical cluster approximation, which, in contrast to single-site dynamical mean-field theory, captures the effect of short-range correlations. The relaxation time is found to scale with the strength of the nearest-neighbor spin correlations, and can be 10-20 fs in the cuprates. Increasing the temperature or excitation density decreases the spin correlations and thus implies longer relaxation times. This may help to distinguish the effect of spin-fluctuations on the charge relaxation from the influence of other bosonic modes in the solid.
Ultra-fast spectroscopy can reveal the interplay of charges with low energy degrees of freedom,which underlies the rich physics of correlated materials. As a potential glue for superconductivity,spin fluctuations in Mott insulators are of particular interest. A theoretical description of the coupledspin and charge degrees of freedom is challenging, because magnetic order is often only shortlivedand short-ranged. In this work we theoretically investigate how the spin-charge interactionsinfluence the relaxation of a two-dimensional Mott-Hubbard insulator after photo-excitation. We usea nonequilibrium variant of the dynamical cluster approximation, which, in contrast to single-sitedynamical mean-field theory, captures the effect of short-range correlations. The relaxation time isfound to scale with the strength of the nearest-neighbor spin correlations, and can be 10–20 fs in thecuprates. Increasing the temperature or excitation density decreases the spin correlations and thusimplies longer relaxation times. This may help to distinguish the effect of spin-fluctuations on thecharge relaxation from the influence of other bosonic modes in the solid.
We study the relaxation dynamics of photocarriers in the paramagnetic Mott insulating phase of the half-filled two-band Hubbard model. Using nonequilibrium dynamical mean-field theory, we excite charge carriers across the Mott gap by a short hopping modulation, and simulate the evolution of the photodoped population within the Hubbard bands. We observe an ultrafast charge-carrier relaxation driven by the emission of local spin excitations with an inverse relaxation time proportional to the Hund's coupling. The photodoping generates additional side-bands in the spectral function, and for strong Hund's coupling, the photodoped population also splits into several resonances. The dynamics of the local many-body states reveals two effects, thermal blocking and kinetic freezing, which manifest themselves when the Hund's coupling becomes of the order of the temperature or the bandwidth, respectively. These effects, which are absent in the single-band Hubbard model, should be relevant for the interpretation of experiments on correlated materials with multiple active orbitals. In particular, the features revealed in the nonequilibrium energy distribution of the photocarriers are experimentally accessible, and provide information on the role of the Hund's coupling in these materials.
We theoretically investigate the dynamics of insulator-metal transition induced by light-pulse excitation in one-dimensional (1D) and two-dimensional (2D) Mott insulators. We adopt the Pariser-Parr-Pople model, and pump-probe signal is obtained by numerically calculating the time development of the state excited by a light pulse. In the 1D case, when photoexcitation density is below about 10%, an extremely small portion of the energy eigenstates dominates the optical process, and the spin-charge separation holds in these dominant energy eigenstates. As a result, the Mott gap and the short-range antiferromagnetic (AF) spin order are preserved, and the spin relaxation does not occur. When the density is above the value, a metallic state without the Mott gap is photogenerated, and the magnitude of the short-range AF spin order is significantly reduced by photoexcitation. This is consistent with the experimentally observed photoinduced Mott transition. Furthermore, the spin relaxation occurs in the metallic state. This photoinduced Mott transition is a manifestation of the spin-charge coupling in the intensely photoexcited states. In the 2D case, the spin and the charge degrees of freedom are coupled even in the weakly photoexcited states, and the characteristic crossover associated with the excitation density is not observed.
Motivated by recent experiments on Mott insulators, in both iridates and ultracold atoms, we theoretically study the effects of magnetic order on the Mott-Hubbard excitons. In particular, we focus on spin-mediated doublon-holon pairing in Hubbard materials. We use several complementary theoretical techniques: Mean-field theory to describe the spin degrees of freedom, the self-consistent Born approximation to characterize individual charge excitations across the Hubbard gap, and the Bethe-Salpeter equation to identify bound states of doublons and holons. The binding energy of the Mott exciton is found to increase with increasing the N\'eel order parameter, whereas the exciton mass decreases. We observe that these trends rely significantly on the retardation of the effective interaction, and require consideration of multiple effects from changing the magnetic order. Our results are consistent with the key qualitative trends observed in recent experiments on iridates. Moreover, the findings could have direct implications on ultracold atom Mott insulators where the Hubbard model is the exact description of the system and the microscopic degrees of freedom can be directly accessed.
We theoretically investigate the light absorption spectrum of two-dimensional (2D) Mott insulators. We employ the numerical diagonalization method to calculate the light absorption spectrum with using the effective Hamiltonian for the extended Hubbard model, which is valid when the on-site Coulomb interaction energy U is much larger than the nearest-neighbor transfer integral t and the nearest-neighbor Coulomb interaction energy V. For V=0, the absorption spectrum consists of a broad band with a width of about 16t and a sharp central peak, and the energy eigenstates contributing to the absorption spectrum do not have the antiferromagnetic (AF) spin order, when U is sufficiently larger than t. These features result from the spin-charge interplay inherent in the very strong correlation region where charge transfer term is dominant. With decreasing U∕t, the peak structure in absorption spectrum becomes unclear and some low energy eigenstates have the AF spin order, as a result of the spin-spin interaction term. For large V∕t, the dominant peak arises in the lower energy region of the spectrum. A large number of holon-doublon bound states, which have nearly the same charge but different spin structures, are responsible for this peak, in contrast to the conventional exciton state. This is also in contrast to the charge bound states in one-dimensional (1D) Mott insulators, where a single energy eigenstate dominates the optical transition moment as a result of the spin-charge separation. The essentially different absorption spectra between the 1D and 2D Mott insulators originate from the difference in the coupling between spin and charge degrees of freedom.
The study of nonequilibrium phenomena in interacting lattice systems can provide new perspectives on correlation effects, and information on metastable states of matter. Mott insulators are a promising class of systems for nonequilibrium studies, since they exhibit exotic phenomena and complex phase diagrams upon doping, and because a large Mott gap provides protection against fast thermalization and heating after photo-excitations. We can thus expect the emergence of interesting transient states and photo-induced phases in Mott systems. This review presents the current understanding of the mechanisms which control the time evolution of photo-doped charge carriers and the properties of photo-induced metastable states. We focus on recent theoretical progress, identify the relevant underlying concepts, and link them to experimental observations. The review starts with a general discussion of field-induced nonequilibrium setups and an overview of key experiments which revealed characteristic properties of photo-excited Mott states, proceeds with a compact overview of the theoretical tools which have been developed to investigate these strongly correlated nonequilibrium states, and then analyzes Mott insulators driven out of equilibrium by static electric fields, periodic fields, and short laser pulses. We also discuss the appearance of nonthermal electronic orders in photo-excited Mott systems, including nonthermal spin and orbital orders, η pairing states, and novel types of excitonic orders.