Motivated by the recent progress in time-resolved nonequilibrium spectroscopy in condensed matter, we study an optically excited one-dimensional ionic Hubbard model by exact diagonalization. The model is relevant to organic crystals, transition metal oxides, or ultracold atoms in optical lattices. We implement numerical pump-probe measurements to calculate time-dependent conductivity and single-particle spectral functions. In general, short optical excitation induces a metallic behavior imprinted as a Drude peak in conductivity or an in-gap density of states. In a Mott insulator, we find that the induced Drude peak oscillates at the pump frequency and its second harmonic. The former comes from the oscillation of currents, and the latter from the interference of single- and three-photon excited states. In a band insulator, the Drude peak oscillates only at the pump frequency, and quantities such as the double occupancy do not oscillate. The absence of the second harmonic oscillation is due to the degeneracy of multi-photon excited states. The in-gap density of states in both insulators correlates with the Drude weight and the energy absorption for weak pumping. Strong pumping leads to saturation of the in-gap density of states and to suppression of the Drude weight in the Mott regime. We have also checked that the above features are robust for insulators in the intermediate parameter range. Our study demonstrates the distinct natures of the multi-photon excited states in two different insulators.
We investigate the resonant two-magnon Raman scattering in two-dimensional (2D) Mott insulators by using a half-filled 2D Hubbard model in the strong coupling limit. By performing numerical diagonalization calculations for small clusters, we find that the Raman intensity is enhanced when the incoming photon energy is not near the optical absorption edge but well above it, being consistent with experimental data. The absence of resonance near the gap edge is associated with the presence of background spins, while photoexcited states for resonance are found to be characterized by the charge degr…
Symmetry of photoexcited states with two photoinduced carriers in two-dimensional Mott insulators is examined by applying the numerically exact diagonalization method to finite-size clusters of a half-filled Hubbard model in the strong-coupling limit. The symmetry of minimum-energy bound state is found to be s-wave, which is different from a d_{x^2-y^2} wave of a two-hole pair in doped Mott insulators. We demonstrate that the difference is originated from an exchange of fermions due to the motion of a doubly occupied site. Correspondingly large-shift Raman scattering across the Mott gap exhibi…
We study photoinduced optical responses of one-dimensional strongly correlated electron systems. The optical conductivity spectra are calculated for the ground state and a photoexcited state in the one-dimensional Hubbard model at half filling by using the exact diagonalization method. It is found that, in the Mott insulator phase, the photoexcited state has large spectral weights including the Drude weight below the optical gap. As a consequence, the spectral weight above the optical gap is largely reduced. These results imply that a metallic state is induced by photoexcitation. Comparison be…
We propose a multielectron approach to calculate superexchange interaction in magnetic Mott- Hubbard insulator La2CuO4(further La214) that allows to obtain the effect of optical pumping on the superexchange interaction. We use the cell perturbation theory with exact diagonalization of the multiband pd Hamiltonian inside each CuO6 unit cell and treating the intercell hopping as perturbation. To incorporate effect of optical pumping we include in this work the excited singlehole local states as well as all two-hole singlets and triplets. By projecting out the interband intercell electron hopping…
Dynamics of charge density and lattice displacements after the neutral phase is photoexcited is studied by solving the time-dependent Schrödinger equation for a one-dimensional extended Peierls-Hubbard model with alternating potentials. In contrast to the ionic-to-neutral transition studied previously, the neutral-to-ionic transition proceeds in an uncooperative manner as far as the one-dimensional system is concerned. The final ionicity is a linear function of the increment of the total energy. After the electric field is turned off, the electronic state does not significantly change, roughly…
In order to study consequences of the differences between the ionic-to-neutral and neutral-to-ionic transitions in the one-dimensional extended Peierls-Hubbard model with alternating potentials for the TTF-CA complex, we introduce a double pulse of oscillating electric field in the time-dependent Schrödinger equation and vary the interval between the two pulses as well as their strengths. When the dimerized ionic phase is photoexcited, the interference effect is clearly observed owing to the coherence of charge density and lattice displacements. Namely, the two pulses constructively interfere …
Using femtosecond time-resolved photoelectron spectroscopy we demonstrate that photoexcitation transforms monoclinic VO$_2$ quasi-instantaneously into a metal. Thereby, we exclude an 80 femtosecond structural bottleneck for the photoinduced electronic phase transition of VO$_2$. First-principles many-body perturbation theory calculations reveal a high sensitivity of the VO$_2$ bandgap to variations of the dynamically screened Coulomb interaction, supporting a fully electronically driven isostructral insulator-to-metal transition. We thus conclude that the ultrafast band structure renormalizati…
We investigate the ground state phase diagram of the one-dimensional ionic Hubbard model with an alternating potential at half-filling by the bosonization technique as well as by numerical diagonalization of finite systems with the Lanczos and DMRG methods. Our results support the existence of a single "metallic" transition point from a band to a correlated insulator with simultaneous charge and bond-charge order. In addition, we present results for the optical conductivity obtained by the dynamical DMRG method. The insulator-insulator phase transition scenario is discussed in detail including…
We investigate the ground-state phase diagram of the one-dimensional "ionic" Hubbard model with an alternating periodic potential at half-filling by numerical diagonalization of finite systems with the Lanczos and density matrix renormalization group (DMRG) methods. We identify an insulator-insulator phase transition from a band to a correlated insulator with simultaneous charge and bond-charge order. The transition point is characterized by the vanishing of the optical excitation gap while simultaneously the charge and spin gaps remain finite and equal. Indications for a possible second trans…
Photoinduced dynamics of charge density and lattice displacements is calculated by solving the time-dependent Schrödinger equation for a one-dimensional extended Peierls-Hubbard model with alternating potentials for the mixed-stack organic charge-transfer complex, TTF-CA. A pulse of oscillating electric field is incorporated into the Peierls phase of the transfer integral. The frequency, the amplitude, and the duration of the pulse are varied to study the nonlinear and cooperative character of the photoinduced transition. When the dimerized ionic phase is photoexcited, the threshold behavior i…
We present a numerical study of the charge dynamical structure factor N(k,omega) of a one-dimensional (1D) ionic Hubbard model in the Mott insulator phase. We show that the low-energy spectrum of N(k,omega) is expressed in terms of the spin operators for the spin degrees of freedom. Numerical results of N(k,omega) for the spin degrees of freedom, obtained by the Lanczos diagonalization method, well reproduce the low-energy spectrum of N(k,omega) of the 1D ionic Hubbard model. In addition, we show that these spectral peaks probe the dispersion of the spin-singlet excitations of the system and a…
We present exact diagonalization results on a modified Peierls-Hubbard model for the neutral-ionic phase transition. The ground state potential energy surface and the infrared intensity of the Peierls mode point to a strong, non-linear electron-phonon coupling, with effects that are dominated by the proximity to the electronic instability rather than by electronic correlations. The huge infrared intensity of the Peierls mode at the ferroelectric transition is related to the temperature dependence of the dielectric constant of mixed-stack organic crystals.
Quantum Monte Carlo methods are used to study a quantum phase transition in a 1D Hubbard model with a staggered ionic potential (D). Using recently formulated methods, the electronic polarization and localization are determined directly from the correlated ground state wavefunction and compared to results of previous work using exact diagonalization and Hartree-Fock. We find that the model undergoes a thermodynamic transition from a band insulator (BI) to a broken-symmetry bond ordered (BO) phase as the ratio of U/D is increased. Since it is known that at D = 0 the usual Hubbard model is a Mot…
Employing the density-matrix renormalization group technique in the matrix-product-state representation, we investigate the photoexcited superconducting correlations induced by the $η$-pairing mechanism in the half-filled Hubbard chain. We estimate the characteristic pair correlation function and verify the accuracy of our numerical results by comparison with exact-diagonalization data for small systems. The optimal parameter set of the pump that most enhances the $η$-pair correlations, is calculated in the strong-coupling regime. For such a pump, we explore the possibility of quasi-long-range…
By employing the exact-diagonalization method, we revisit the ground-state phase diagram of the Haldane-Hubbard model on the honeycomb lattice with staggered sublattice potentials. The phase diagram includes the band insulator, Mott insulator, and two Chern insulator phases with Chern numbers C=2 and C=1, respectively. The character of transitions between different phases is studied by analyzing the lower-lying energy levels, excitation gaps, structure factors, and fidelity metric. We find that the C=1 phase can be continuously deformed into the C=2 phase without a gap closure in the periodic …
We investigate the microscopic dynamics at the initial stage of photoinduced phase transitions in tetrathiafulvalene-$p$-chloranil by exact diagonalization. We first show that the one-dimensional extended Peierls-Hubbard model exhibits a neutral phase with small ionicity and negligible dimerization and an ionic phase with moderate ionicity and dimerization. Aside from these phases, we find a doubly ionized phase with strong dimerization that we call the "dipole" phase. These ground-state phases are characterized by various order parameters and the Zak phase, which is relevant to electronic pol…
We study the third-order nonlinear optical susceptibility $χ^{(3)}$ and photoexcited states of two-dimensional (2D) Mott insulators by using an effective model in the strong-coupling limit of a half-filled Hubbard model. In the numerically exact diagonalization calculations on finite-size clusters, we find that the coupling of charge and spin degrees of freedom plays a crucial role in the distribution of the dipole-allowed states with odd parity and the dipole-forbidden states with even parity in the photoexcited states. This is in contrast with the photoexcited states in one dimension, where …
We use Lanczos exact diagonalization to compute the exact exchange-correlation (xc) potential of a Hubbard chain with large binding energy ("the bulk") followed by a chain with zero binding energy ("the vacuum"). Several results of density functional theory in the continuum (sometimes controversial) are verified in the lattice. In particular we show explicitly that the fundamental gap is given by the gap in the Kohn-Sham spectrum plus a contribution due to the jump of the xc-potential when a particle is added. The presence of a staggered potential and a nearest-neighbor interaction V allows to…
We report a detailed study of a model Hamiltonian which exhibits a rich interplay of geometrical spin frustration, strong electronic correlations, and charge ordering. The character of the insulating phase depends on the magnitude of Delta/|t| and on the sign of t. We find a Mott insulator for Delta >> U >> |t|; a charge transfer insulator for U >> Δ>> |t|; and a correlated covalent insulator for U >> Δ~ |t|. The charge transfer insulating state is investigated using a strong coupling expansion. The frustration of the triangular lattice can lead to antiferromagnetism or ferromagnetism dependin…
We theoretically study the nonlinear optical response and photoexcited states of the Mott insulators. The nonlinear optical susceptibility χ^(3) is calculated by using the exact diagonalization technique on small clusters. From the systematic study of the dependence of χ^(3) on dimensionality, we find that the spin-charge separation plays a crucial role in enhancing χ^(3) in the one-dimensional (1D) Mott insulators. Based on this result, we propose a holon-doublon model, which describes the nonlinear response in the 1D Mott insulators. These findings show that the spin-charge separation will b…
We investigate the ground-state phase diagram of the one-dimensional half-filled Hubbard model with an alternating potential--a model for the charge-transfer organic materials and the ferroelectric perovskites. We numerically determine the global phase diagram of this model using the level-crossing and the phenomenological renormalization-group methods based on the exact diagonalization calculations. Our results support the mechanism of the double phase transitions between Mott and a band insulators pointed out by Fabrizio, Gogolin, and Nersesyan [Phys. Rev. Lett. 83, 2014 (1999)]: We confirm …
