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arXiv:2305.04895 · New Journal of Physics

Doublon–holon pair creation in Mott–Hubbard systems in analogy to QED

Friedemann Queißer, Konstantin V. Krutitsky, Patrick Navez, R Schützhold

Published Jan 28, 2025• 4 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Abstract Via the hierarchy of correlations, we study doublon–holon pair creation in the Mott state of the Fermi–Hubbard model (in higher dimensions) induced by a time-dependent electric field. Special emphasis is placed on the analogy to electron–positron pair creation from the vacuum in quantum electrodynamics. We find that the accuracy and applicability of this analogy depends on the spin structure of the Mott background. For Ising type anti-ferromagnetic order, we derive an effective Dirac equation. A Mott state without any spin order or spin polarized states do not explicitly display the same quasi-relativistic behavior.

DOI
10.1088/1367-2630/adaf4e

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Abstract Via the hierarchy of correlations, we study doublon–holon pair creation in the Mott state of the Fermi–Hubbard model (in higher dimensions) induced by a time-dependent electric field. Special emphasis is placed on the analogy to electron–positron pair creation from the vacuum in quantum electrodynamics. We find that the accuracy and applicability of this analogy depends on the spin structure of the Mott background. For Ising type anti-ferromagnetic order, we derive an effective Dirac equation. A Mott state without any spin order or spin polarized states do not explicitly display the same quasi-relativistic behavior.
Abstract For the Mott insulator state of the Fermi-Hubbard model in the strong-coupling limit, we study the interaction between quasi-particles in the form of doublons and holons. Comparing different methods – the hierarchy of correlations, strong-coupling perturbation theory, and exact analytic solutions for the Hubbard tetramer – we find an effective interaction between doublons and/or holons to linear order in the hopping strength which can display attractive as well as repulsive contributions, depending on the involved momenta. Finally, we speculate about the implications of our findings for high-temperature superconductivity.
We study the binding of a holon to a doublon in a half-filled Hubbard model as the mechanism of the zero-temperature metal-insulator transition. In a spin polarized system a single holon-doublon (HD) pair exhibits a binding transition on a 3D lattice, or a sharp crossover on a 2D lattice, corresponding well to the standard Mott transition in unpolarized systems. We extend the HD-pair study towards nonpolarized systems by considering more general spin background and by treating the finite HD density within a BCS-type approximation. Both approaches lead to a discontinuous transition away from the fully polarized system and give density correlations consistent with numerical results on a triangular lattice.
For the Fermi-Hubbard model in the Mott insulator phase, we employ the hierarchy of correlations to study how doublon and holon quasi-particle excitations are affected by adding disorder to the system. We study two types of disorder: charge disorder, in the form of on-site potential randomness; and spin disorder, in the form of a fixed, randomly generated background spin arrangement. By analysing the quasi-particle eigen-spectra and quantifying the degree to which the corresponding eigen-states localise, we find both an energetic and spatial separation between localised and delocalised states in the charge disorder. In contrast, the spin disorder results in localised states throughout the quasi-particle bands. Finally, we repeat our calculations using strong-coupling perturbation theory, and compare the results obtained from both methods.
We study the Bose-Hubbard and Fermi-Hubbard model in the limit of large coordination numbers Z (i.e., many tunnelling partners). Via a controlled expansion into powers of 1/Z, we establish a hierarchy of correlations, which facilitates an approximate analytic solution of the quantum evolution. For the Bose-Hubbard model, we derive the growth of phase coherence after a quench from the Mott to the superfluid phase. For a quench within the Mott phase, we find that various local observables approach a quasi-equilibrium state after a finite period of time. However, this state is not thermal, i.e., real thermalisation -- if it occurs -- requires much longer time scales. For a tilted lattice in the Mott state, we calculate the tunnelling probability and find a remarkable analogy to the Sauter-Schwinger effect (i.e., electron-positron pair creation out of the vacuum due to a strong electric field). These analytical results are compared to numerical simulations for finite lattices in one and two dimensions and we find qualitative agreement. Finally, we generalize these studies to the more involved case of the Fermi-Hubbard model.
The spontaneous creation of electron–positron pairs out of the vacuum due to a strong electric field is a spectacular manifestation of the relativistic energy–momentum relation for the Dirac fermions. This fundamental prediction of quantum electrodynamics has not yet been confirmed experimentally, as the generation of a sufficiently strong electric field extending over a large enough space–time volume still presents a challenge. Surprisingly, distant areas of physics may help us to circumvent this difficulty. In condensed matter and solid state physics (areas commonly considered as low-energy physics), one usually deals with quasi-particles instead of real electrons and positrons. Since their mass gap can often be freely tuned, it is much easier to create these light quasi-particles by an analogue of the Sauter–Schwinger effect. This motivates our proposal for a quantum simulator in which excitations of ultra-cold atoms moving in a bichromatic optical lattice represent particles and antiparticles (holes) satisfying a discretized version of the Dirac equation together with fermionic anti-commutation relations. Using the language of second quantization, we are able to construct an analogue of the spontaneous pair creation which can be realized in an (almost) table-top experiment.
Charge creation via quantum tunneling, i.e. dielectric breakdown, is one of the most fundamental and significant phenomena arising from strong light(field)-matter coupling. In this work, we conduct a systematic numerical analysis of quantum tunneling in one-dimensional Mott insulators described by the extended (UUU-VVV) Hubbard model. We discuss the applicability of the analytical formula for doublon-holon (DH) pair production, previously derived for the one-dimensional Hubbard model, which highlights the relationship between the tunneling threshold, the charge gap, and the correlation length. We test the formulas ability to predict both DH pair production and energy increase rate. Using tensor-network-based approaches, we demonstrate that the formula provides accurate predictions in the absence of excitonic states facilitated by the nearest-neighbor interaction VVV. However, when excitonic states emerge, the formula more accurately describes the rate of energy increase than the DH pair creation rate and in both cases gets improved by incorporating the exciton energy as the effective gap.