The hopping dynamics of two fermionic species with different effective masses in the one-dimensional Hubbard model driven by an external field is theoretically investigated. A multiple-time-scale asymptotic analysis of the driven asymmetric Hubbard model shows that a high-frequency bichromatic external field can sustain a new kind of low-energy particle bound state (doublon), in which two fermions of different species occupy nearest neighbor sites and co-tunnel along the lattice. The predictions of the asymptotic analysis are confirmed by direct numerical simulations of the two-particle Hubbard Hamiltonian.
For the fermionic Hubbard model at strong coupling, we demonstrate that directional transport of localized doublons (repulsively bound pairs of two particles occupying the same site of the crystal lattice) can be achieved by applying an unbiased ac field of time-asymmetric (sawtooth-like) shape. The mechanism involves a transition to intermediate states of virtually zero double occupation which are reached by splitting the doublon by fields of the order of the Hubbard interaction. The process is discussed on the basis of numerically exact calculations for small clusters, and we apply it to mor…
Hirsch's dynamic Hubbard model describes the effect of orbital expansion with occupancy by coupling the doublon operator to an auxiliary boson. We use the nonequilibrium dynamical mean field method to study the properties of doublon and hole carriers in this model in the strongly correlated regime. In particular, we discuss how photodoping leads to doublon and hole populations with different effective temperatures, and we analyze the relaxation behavior as a function of the boson coupling and boson energy. In the polaronic regime, the nontrivial energy exchange between doublons, holes and boso…
We study the dynamics of doublon in the half-filled Hubbard model on the triangular lattice by using the cellular dynamical mean field theory. Investigating the nearest-neighbor dynamical correlations, we demonstrate that a nearest-neighbor doublon-holon pair shows a strong attraction, in particular in the insulating phase. We also calculate the on-site dynamical correlation of doublon and find that the life time of doublon is longer in the metallic phase than in the insulating phase. In the long-time region, the metallic phase has persistent fluctuations in various nearest-neighbor configurat…
The dynamics of holon-doublon pairs is studied in Hubbard two-leg ladders using the time-dependent Density Matrix Renormalization Group method. We find that the geometry of the two-leg ladder, that is qualitatively different from a one-dimensional chain due to the presence of a spin-gap, strongly affects the propagation of a doublon-holon pair. Two distinct regimes are identified. For weak inter-leg coupling, the results are qualitatively similar to the case of the propagation previously reported in Hubbard chains, with only a renormalization of parameters. More interesting is the case of stro…
We argue that the binding between doubly occupied (doublon) and empty (holon) sites governs the incoherent excitations and plays a key role in the Mott transition in strongly correlated Mott-Hubbard systems. We construct a new saddle point solution with doublon-holon binding in the Kotliar-Ruckenstein slave-boson functional integral formulation of the Hubbard model. On the half-filled honeycomb lattice and square lattice, the ground state is found to exhibit a continuous transition from the paramagnetic semimetal/metal to an antiferromagnetic ordered Slater insulator with coherent quasiparticl…
An analytical solution of the Mott transition is obtained for the Hubbard model on the Bethe lattice in the large coordination number ($z$) limit. The excitonic binding of doublons (doubly occupied sites) and holons (empty sites) is shown to be the origin of a continuous Mott transition between a metal and an emergent quantum spin liquid insulator. The doublon-holon binding theory enables a different large-$z$ limit and a different phase structure than the dynamical meanfield theory by allowing intersite spinon correlations to lift the $2^N$-fold degeneracy of the local moments in the insulati…
We derive a "Wannier-Hubbard" model consisting of an array of overlapping atomic orbitals interacting via a local Coulomb interaction. Transforming to an orthogonal Wannier basis set, the resulting Hamiltonian displays long range hopping and interactions, with new terms such as correlated hopping and ferromagnetic direct exchange, among others. We numerically study the one-dimensional version of the model at half-filling using the density matrix renormalization group (DMRG) method, unveiling a rich phase diagram as a function of the interaction $U$ and the overlap $s$ with metallic, and ferrom…
We consider strongly correlated limit of variants of the Hubbard model (HM) in which on parts of the system it is energetically favourable to project out doublons from the low energy Hilbert space while on other sites of the system it is favourable to project out holes while still allowing for doublons. As an effect the low energy Hilbert space itself varies with sites of the system. Though the formalism is well developed for the case of doublon projection in the literature, case of hole projection has not been explored in detail so far. We derive basic framework by defining creation and annih…
Dynamical mean-field theory (DMFT) studies frequently observe a fine structure in the local spectral function of the SU(2) Fermi-Hubbard model at half filling: In the metallic phase close to the Mott transition, subpeaks emerge at the inner edges of the Hubbard bands. Here we demonstrate that these subpeaks originate from the low-energy effective interaction of doublon-holon pairs, by investigating how the correlation functions of doublon and holon operators contribute to the subpeaks. A mean-field analysis of the low-energy effective Hamiltonian provides results consistent with our DMFT calcu…
Two fermions occupying the same site of a lattice model with strongly repulsive Hubbard-type interaction U form a doublon, a long-living excitation the decay of which is suppressed because of energy conservation. By means of an exact-diagonalization approach based on the Krylov-space technique, we study the dynamics of a single doublon, of two doublons, and of a doublon in the presence of two additional fermions prepared locally in the initial state of the extended Hubbard model. The time dependence of the expectation value of the double occupancy at the different sites of a large one-dimensio…
We investigate the possibility to control dynamically the interactions between repulsively bound pairs of fermions (doublons) in correlated systems with off-resonant ac fields. We introduce an effective Hamiltonian that describes the physics of doublons up to the second-order in the high-frequency limit. It unveils that the doublon interaction, which is attractive in equilibrium, can be completely suppressed and then switched to repulsive by varying the power of the ac field. We show that the signature of the dynamical repulsion between doublons can be found in the single-fermion density of st…
We report on the single atom and single site-resolved detection of the total density in a cold atom realization of the 2D Fermi-Hubbard model. Fluorescence imaging of doublons is achieved by splitting each lattice site into a double well, thereby separating atom pairs. Full density readout yields a direct measurement of the equation of state, including direct thermometry via the fluctuation-dissipation theorem. Site-resolved density correlations reveal the Pauli hole at low filling, and strong doublon-hole correlations near half filling. These are shown to account for the difference between lo…
We study the effect of strong DC and pulsed electric fields on a Mott insulating system with coupling to optical phonons. A DC field of the order of the gap induces a metallic state characterized by polaronic features in the gap region and a partially inverted population. In this quasi-steady state, the field-induced doublon-hole production is balanced by a phonon-enhanced doublon-hole recombination. The photo-excitation of carriers by a pulsed field leads to similar modifications of the electronic structure in the gap region, and an associated reduction of the doublon life-time. We demonstrat…
We study quenches of the interaction and electron-phonon coupling parameter in the Hubbard-Holstein model, using nonequilibrium dynamical mean field theory. The calculations are based on a generalized Lang-Firsov scheme for time-dependent interactions or externally driven phonons, and an approximate strong-coupling impurity solver. The interaction quench calculations reveal the phonon-assisted decay of excess doublons, while the quenches of the electron-phonon coupling lead to persistent oscillations of the phonons and to a phonon-enhanced doublon production.
By the example of the Hubbard model we analytically and numerically examine the formating and coexisting of localized electron--electron pairs (doublons) and localized electron--hole pairs (Frenkel--type excitons) . Here we demonstrate that at a variation of the on-site Coulomb repulsion U there occurs a quantum transition from the doublon to the exciton regime that is conditioned by the low-energy effective hybridization of the valence and conductivity subbands. We calculate momentum distribution functions and electronic spectrum functions for different U, which reveal topologically nontrivia…
In spin-1/2 one-dimensional Heisenberg antiferromagnets and anisotropic triangular Heisenberg antiferromagnets, high-energy states carrying considerable spectral weights have been observed in a magnetic field using inelastic neutron scattering. Such high-energy properties cannot be explained in terms of either Nambu-Goldstone bosons due to spontaneous breaking of continuous symmetries or quasiparticles in a Tomonaga-Luttinger liquid. Here, we show that the mechanism causing the high-energy states is analogous to that of the upper Hubbard band in the one-dimensional Hubbard model, by theoretica…
The Mott metal-insulator transition in the Hubbard model is studied by constructing a dynamical slave-boson mean-field theory in the limit of large lattice coordination number $z$ that incorporates the binding between doubly occupied (doublon) and empty (holon) sites. On the Mott insulating side where all doublons and holons bond in real space into excitonic pairs leading to the charge gap, the theory simplifies considerably to leading order in $1/\sqrt{z}$, and becomes exact on the infinite-$z$ Bethe lattice. An asymptotic solution is obtained for a continuous Mott transition associated with …
The fate of a local two-hole doublon excitation in the one-dimensional Fermi-Hubbard model is systematically studied for strong Hubbard interaction U in the entire filling range using the density-matrix renormalization group (DMRG) and the Bethe ansatz. For strong U, two holes at the same site form a compound object whose decay is impeded by the lack of phase space. Still, a partial decay is possible on an extremely short time scale where phase-space arguments do not yet apply. We argue that the initial decay and the resulting intermediate state are relevant for experiments performed with ultr…
We investigate the decay of highly excited states of ultracold fermions in a three-dimensional optical lattice. Starting from a repulsive Fermi-Hubbard system near half filling, we generate additional doubly occupied sites (doublons) by lattice modulation. The subsequent relaxation back to thermal equilibrium is monitored over time. The measured doublon lifetime covers two orders of magnitude. In units of the tunneling time h/J it is found to depend exponentially on the ratio of on-site interaction energy U to kinetic energy J. We argue that the dominant mechanism for the relaxation is a high …
We show that a metastable $η$--pairing superconducting phase can be induced by photodoping doublons and holes into a strongly repulsive fermionic Hubbard model. The doublon-hole condensate originates from an intrinsic doublon-hole exchange interaction and does not rely on the symmetry of the half-filled Hubbard model. It extends over a wide range of doublon densities and effective temperatures. Different non-equilibrium protocols to realize this state are proposed and numerically tested. We also study the optical conductivity in the superconducting phase, which exhibits ideal metallic behavior…
We study the real-time evolution of a charge-excited state in a one-dimensional $e_{\rm g}$-orbital degenerate Hubbard model, by a time-dependent density-matrix renormalization group method. Considering a chain along the $z$ direction, electrons hop between adjacent $3z^2-r^2$ orbitals, while $x^2-y^2$ orbitals are localized. For the charge-excited state, a holon-doublon pair is introduced into the ground state at quarter filling. At initial time, there is no electron in a holon site, while a pair of electrons occupies $3z^2-r^2$ orbital in a doublon site. As the time evolves, the holon motion…
Using dynamical mean-field theory and the non-crossing approximation as impurity solver, we study the response of a Mott insulator to strong dc electric fields. The breakdown of the Mott insulating state is triggered by field-induced creation of doublon-hole pairs. In a previous investigation, Ref. [1], it was found that the system approaches a long-lived quasi-steady state in which the current is time-independent although the number of carriers constantly increases. Here we investigate and clarify the nature of this state, which exists only because thermalization is slow in the Hubbard model …
We give a self-contained derivation of the low-energy effective interactions of the SU($N$) Hubbard model, a multiflavor generalization of the one-band Hubbard model, by using a generalized Schrieffer-Wolff transformation (SWT). The effective interaction of doublons and holons, which has been largely ignored in previous SWT studies (e.g., the $t$-$J$ model), leads to distinct peaks in the local density of states. As shown by Lee et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 119, 236402 (2017)], this underlying effective doublon-holon interaction explains the numerical observation of the subpeaks at the inner edges…
In the ionic Hubbard model, the onsite repulsion $U$, which drives a Mott insulator and the ionic potential $V$, which drives a band insulator, compete with each other to open up a window of charge fluctuations when $U \sim V$. We study this model on square and cubic lattices in the limit of large $U$ and $V$, with $V\sim U$. Using an effective Hamiltonian and a slave boson approach with both doublons and holes, we find that the system undergoes a phase transition as a function of $V$ from an antiferromagnetic Mott insulator to a paramagnetic insulator with strong singlet correlations, which i…
We demonstrate the existence of long-lived prethermalized states in the Mott insulating Hubbard model driven by periodic electric fields. These states, which also exist in the resonantly driven case with a large density of photo-induced doublons and holons, are characterized by a nonzero current and an effective temperature of the doublons and holons which depends sensitively on the driving condition. Focusing on the specific case of resonantly driven models whose effective time-independent Hamiltonian in the high-frequency driving limit corresponds to noninteracting fermions, we show that the…
We theoretically investigate pump-probe optical responses in the two-dimensional extended Hubbard model describing cuprates by using a time-dependent Lanczos method. At half filling, pumping generates photoinduced absorptions inside the Mott gap. A part of low-energy absorptions is attributed to the independent propagation of photoinduced holons and doublons. The spectral weight just below the Mott gap increases with decreasing the on-site Coulomb interaction $U$. We find that the next-nearest-neighbor Coulomb interaction $V_1$ enhances this $U$ dependence, indicating the presence of biexciton…
We investigate the decay of artificially created double occupancies in a repulsive Fermi-Hubbard system in the strongly interacting limit using diagrammatic many-body theory and experiments with ultracold fermions on optical lattices. The lifetime of the doublons is found to scale exponentially with the ratio of the on-site repulsion to the bandwidth. We show that the dominant decay process in presence of background holes is the excitation of a large number of particle hole pairs to absorb the energy of the doublon. We also show that the strongly interacting nature of the background state is c…
To understand the mechanism of Mott transitions in case of no magnetic influence, superfluid-insulator (Mott) transitions in the S=0 Bose Hubbard model at unit filling are studied on the square and triangular lattices, using a variational Monte Carlo method. In trial many-body wave functions, we introduce various types of attractive correlation factors between a doubly-occupied site (doublon, D) and an empty site (holon, H), which play a central role for Mott transitions, in addition to the onsite repulsive (Gutzwiller) factor. By optimizing distance-dependent parameters, we study various prop…
We experimentally and numerically investigate the sudden expansion of fermions in a homogeneous one-dimensional optical lattice. For initial states with an appreciable amount of doublons, we observe a dynamical phase separation between rapidly expanding singlons and slow doublons remaining in the trap center, realizing the key aspect of fermionic quantum distillation in the strongly-interacting limit. For initial states without doublons, we find a reduced interaction dependence of the asymptotic expansion speed compared to bosons, which is explained by the interaction energy produced in the qu…
We show that backflow correlations in the variational wave function for the Hubbard model greatly improve the previous results given by the Slater-Jastrow state, usually considered in this context. We provide evidence that, within this approach, it is possible to have a satisfactory connection with the strong-coupling regime. Moreover, we show that, for the Hubbard model on the lattice, backflow correlations are essentially short range, inducing an effective attraction between empty (holons) and doubly occupied sites (doublons). In presence of frustration, we report the evidence that the metal…
Using the one-dimensional Hubbard model, which is commonly used for describing, e.g., high-$T_c$ superconducting cuprates, we study high-harmonic generation (HHG) from doped, correlated materials. Doping is modeled by changing the number of electrons in the lattice from the conventional half-filling case. For relatively small Hubbard $U$, i.e., small electron-electron correlation, we find little to no effect of doping on the dynamics and the HHG spectra. For increasing $U$ the degree of doping has a marked effect on the dynamics and spectra. We explain these findings through the quasiparticle-…
Using the density-matrix renormalization group in combination with the Chebyshev polynomial expansion technique, we study the two-hole excitation spectrum of the one-dimensional Hubbard model in the entire filling range from the completely occupied band (n=2) down to half-filling (n=1). For strong interactions, the spectra reveal multiplon physics, i.e., relevant final states are characterized by two (doublon), three (triplon), four (quadruplon) and more holes, potentially forming stable compound objects or resonances with finite lifetime. These give rise to several satellites in the spectra w…
We present a numerical scheme for the Hubbard model that throws light on the rather esoteric nature of the Upper and Lower Hubbard bands that have been invoked often in literature. We present a self consistent solution of the ladder diagram equations for the Hubbard model, and show that these provide, at least in the limit of low densities of particles, a vivid picture of the Hubbard split bands. We also address the currently topical problem of decay of the doublon states that are measured in optical trap studies, using the ladder scheme and also by an exact two particle calculation of a relev…
Quantum many-body systems may defy thermalization even without disorder. Intriguingly, non-ergodicity may be caused by a fragmentation of the many-body Hilbert-space into dynamically disconnected subspaces. The tilted one-dimensional Fermi-Hubbard model was proposed as a platform to realize fragmented models perturbatively in the limit of large tilt. Here, we demonstrate the validity of this effective description for the transient dynamics using ultracold fermions. The effective analytic model allows for a detailed understanding of the emergent microscopic processes, which in our case exhibit …
The charge carrier dynamics of doped electronic correlated systems on ladders and chains, subject to ultrafast photoirradiation, is investigated using the time-dependent Lanczos method. The time-resolved optical conductivity and the temporal profiles of other relevant quantities, including the doublon number, the kinetic energy, and the interaction energy, are calculated. Two competitive factors that can influence the transient charge carrier dynamics are identified as the thermal effect and the charge effect. We demonstrate that the analysis of their interplay can provide an intuitive way to …
We study the photoinduced breakdown of a two-orbital Mott insulator and resulting metallic state. Using time-dependent density matrix renormalization group, we scrutinize the real-time dynamics of the half-filled two-orbital Hubbard model interacting with a resonant radiation field pulse. The breakdown, caused by production of doublon-holon pairs, is enhanced by Hund's exchange, which dynamically activates large orbital fluctuations. The melting of the Mott insulator is accompanied by a high to low spin transition with a concomitant reduction of antiferromagnetic spin fluctuations. Most notabl…
We study the influence of the pulse energy and fluence on the thermalization of photo-doped Mott insulators. If the Mott gap is smaller than the width of the Hubbard bands, the kinetic energy of individual carriers can be large enough to produce doublon-hole pairs via a process analogous to impact ionization. The thermalization dynamics, which involves an adjustment of the doublon and hole densities, thus changes as a function of the energy of the photo-doped carriers and exhibits two timescales -- a fast relaxation related to impact ionization and a slower timescale associated with higher-ord…
We use broadband ultra-fast pump-probe spectroscopy in the visible range to study the lowest excitations across the Mott-Hubbard gap in the orbitally ordered insulator YVO3. Separating thermal and non-thermal contributions to the optical transients, we show that the total spectral weight of the two lowest peaks is conserved, demonstrating that both excitations correspond to the same multiplet. The pump-induced transfer of spectral weight between the two peaks reveals that the low-energy one is a Hubbard exciton, i.e. a resonance or bound state between a doublon and a holon. Finally, we specula…
A repulsive Coulomb interaction between electrons in different orbitals in correlated materials can give rise to bound quasiparticle states. We study the non-hybridized two-orbital Hubbard model with intra (inter)-orbital interaction $U$ ($U_{12}$) and different band widths using an improved dynamical mean field theory numerical technique which leads to reliable spectra on the real energy axis directly at zero temperature. We find that a finite density of states at the Fermi energy in one band is correlated with the emergence of well defined quasiparticle states at excited energies $Δ=U-U_{12}…
The two-orbital Hubbard model on a square lattice at quarter filling (electron number per site $n=1$) is investigated by the variational Monte Carlo method. For the variational wave function, we include short-range doublon-holon binding factors. We find that the energy of this wave function is lower than that of the density-density Jastrow wave function partially including long-range correlations used in a previous study. We introduce frustration to the model by the next-nearest-neighbor hopping $t'$ in addition to the nearest-neighbor hopping $t$. For $t'=0$, a ferromagnetic state with stagge…
Nonequilibrium dynamics of the open chain Holstein-Hubbard model is studied using the linear time-scaling GKBA+ODE scheme developed in the preceeding paper. We focus on the set of parameters relevant for photovoltaic materials, i.\,e., a pair of electrons interacting with phonons at the cross-over between the adiabatic and anti-adiabatic regimes and at moderately large electron-electron interaction. By comparing with exact solutions for two corner cases, we demonstrate the accuracy of the $T$-matrix (in the $pp$ channel) and the second-order Fan ($GD$) approximations for the treatment of elect…
The mechanism of Mott transition in the Hubbard model on the square lattice is studied without explicit introduction of magnetic and superconducting correlations, using a variational Monte Carlo method. In the trial wave functions, we consider various types of binding factors between a doubly-occupied site (doublon, D) and an empty site (holon, H), like a long-range type as well as a conventional nearest-neighbor type, and add independent long-range D-D (H-H) factors. It is found that a wide choice of D-H binding factor leads to Mott transitions at critical values near the band width. We renew…
In connection with recent experiments on excitation in which Mott insulators change to conductors, we study the properties of excited states beyond the Mott gap as quasi-stationary states for a two-dimensional Hubbard (t-t'-U) model at half filling. A variational Monte Carlo method is used with trial wave functions for paramagnetic or normal (PM), superconducting with dx2-y2-wave (d-SC), isotropic s-wave, and extended s-wave symmetries, and antiferromagnetic (AF) states. The excited states are generated by imposing a minimum number of doubly occupied sites (doublons) D_L on the lowest-energy s…
