arXiv subjects

Martin Eckstein

Publications and source records attributed to Martin Eckstein.

At least 145 records · Page 8Linked to original sources

arXiv2013

Phonon-enhanced relaxation and excitation in the Holstein-Hubbard model

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.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2013

Hamiltonian-based impurity solver for nonequilibrium dynamical mean-field theory

We derive an exact mapping from the action of nonequilibrium dynamical mean-field theory (DMFT) to a single-impurity Anderson model (SIAM) with time-dependent parameters, which can be solved numerically by exact diagonalization. The representability of the nonequilibrium DMFT action by a SIAM is established as a rather general property of nonequilibrium Green functions. We also obtain the nonequilibrium DMFT equations using the cavity method alone. We show how to numerically obtain the SIAM parameters using Cholesky or eigenvector matrix decompositions. As an application, we use a Krylov-based time propagation method to investigate the Hubbard model in which the hopping is switched on, starting from the atomic limit. Possible future developments are discussed.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2013

Nonthermal antiferromagnetic order and nonequilibrium criticality in the Hubbard model

We study dynamical phase transitions from antiferromagnetic to paramagnetic states driven by an interaction quench in the fermionic Hubbard model using the nonequilibrium dynamical mean-field theory. We identify two dynamical transition points where the relaxation behavior qualitatively changes: one corresponds to the thermal phase transition at which the order parameter decays critically slowly in a power law $\propto t^{-1/2}$, and the other is connected to the existence of nonthermal antiferromagnetic order in systems with effective temperature above the thermal critical temperature. The frequency of the amplitude mode extrapolates to zero as one approaches the nonthermal (quasi)critical point, and thermalization is significantly delayed by the trapping in the nonthermal state. A slow relaxation of the nonthermal order is followed by a faster thermalization process.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2013

Nonequilibrium dynamical mean field simulation of inhomogeneous systems

We extend the nonequilibrium dynamical mean field (DMFT) formalism to inhomogeneous systems by adapting the "real-space" DMFT method to Keldysh Green's functions. Solving the coupled impurity problems using strong-coupling perturbation theory, we apply the formalism to homogeneous and inhomogeneous layered systems with strong local interactions and up to 39 layers. We study the diffusion of doublons and holes created by photo-excitation in a Mott insulating system, the time-dependent build-up of the polarization and the current induced by a linear voltage bias across a multi-layer structure, and the photo-induced current in a Mott insulator under bias.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2012

Dielectric breakdown of Mott insulators -- doublon production and doublon heating

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 at strong coupling. The current is time-independent because doublons and holes have an infinite temperature distribution. Evidence for this fact is obtained from spectral functions and by comparing the electric current with the field-induced doublon-hole creation rate. Implications to real experiments, in systems with energy dissipation, are discussed.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2012

Extracting spectral properties from Keldysh Green functions

We investigate the possibility to assist the numerically ill-posed calculation of spectral properties of interacting quantum systems in thermal equilibrium by extending the imaginary-time simulation to a finite Schwinger-Keldysh contour. The effect of this extension is tested within the standard Maximum Entropy approach to analytic continuation. We find that the inclusion of real-time data improves the resolution of structures at high energy, while the imaginary-time data are needed to correctly reproduce low-frequency features such as quasi-particle peaks. As a nonequilibrium application, we consider the calculation of time-dependent spectral functions from retarded Green function data on a finite time-interval, and compare the Maximum Entropy approach to direct Fourier transformation and a method based on Padé approximants.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2012

Nonthermal symmetry broken states in the strongly interacting Hubbard model

We study the time evolution of the antiferromagnetic order parameter after interaction quenches in the Hubbard model. Using the nonequilibrium dynamical mean field formalism, we show that the system, after a quench from intermediate to strong interaction, is trapped in a nonthermal state which is reminiscent of a photo-doped state and protected by the slow decay of doublons. If the effective doping of this state is low enough, it exhibits robust antiferromagnetic order, even if the system is highly excited and the thermal state thus expected to be paramagnetic. We comment on the implication of our findings for the stability of nonthermal superconducting states.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2012

Photo-induced states in a Mott insulator

We investigate the properties of the metallic state obtained by photo-doping carriers into a Mott insulator. In a strongly interacting system, these carriers have a long life-time, so that they can dissipate their kinetic energy to a phonon bath. In the relaxed state, the scattering rate saturates at a non-zero temperature-independent value, and the momentum-resolved spectral function features broad bands which differ from the well-defined quasi-particle bands of a chemically doped system. Our results indicate that a photo-doped Mott insulator behaves as a bad metal, in which strong scattering between doublons and holes inhibits Fermi-liquid behavior down to low temperature.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2012

Relaxation dynamics of the Kondo lattice model

We study the relaxation properties of the Kondo lattice model using the nonequilibrium dynamical mean field formalism in combination with the non-crossing approximation. The system is driven out of equilibrium either by a magnetic field pulse which perturbs the local singlets, or by a sudden quench of the Kondo coupling. For relaxation processes close to thermal equilibrium (after a weak perturbation), the relaxation time increases substantially as one crosses from the local moment regime into the heavy Fermi liquid. A strong perturbation, which injects a large amount of energy, can rapidly transform the heavy Fermi liquid into a local moment state. Upon cooling, the heavy Fermi liquid reappears in a two-stage relaxation, where the first step opens the Kondo gap and the second step corresponds to a slow approach of the equilibrium state via a nonthermal pathway.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2011

Damping of Bloch oscillations in the Hubbard model

Using nonequilibrium dynamical mean-field theory, we study the isolated Hubbard model in a static electric field in the limit of weak interactions. Linear response behavior is established at long times, but only if the interaction exceeds a critical value, below which the system exhibits an AC-type response with Bloch oscillations. The transition from AC to DC response is defined in terms of the universal long-time behavior of the system, which does not depend on the initial condition.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2011

Optimal ramp shapes for the fermionic Hubbard model in infinite dimensions

We use non-equilibrium dynamical mean field theory and a real-time diagrammatic impurity solver to study the heating associated with time-dependent changes of the interaction in a fermionic Hubbard model. Optimal ramp shapes U(t) which minimize the excitation energy are determined for an infinitesimal change. For ramp times of a few inverse hoppings, these optimal U(t) are strongly oscillating with a frequency determined by the bandwidth. We show that the scaled versions of the optimized ramps yield substantially lower temperatures than linear ramps even far outside the perturbative regime.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2011

Thermalization of a pump-excited Mott insulator

We use nonequilibrium dynamical mean-field theory in combination with a recently implemented strong-coupling impurity solver to investigate the relaxation of a Mott insulator after a laser excitation with frequency comparable to the Hubbard gap. The time evolution of the double occupancy exhibits a crossover from a strongly damped transient at short times towards an exponential thermalization at long times. In the limit of strong interactions, the thermalization time is consistent with the exponentially small decay rate for artificially created doublons, which was measured in ultracold atomic gases. When the interaction is comparable to the bandwidth, on the other hand, the double occupancy thermalizes within a few times the inverse bandwidth along a rapid thermalization path in which the exponential tail is absent. Similar behavior can be observed in time-resolved photoemission spectroscopy. Our results show that a simple quasi-equilibrium description of the electronic state breaks down for pump-excited Mott insulators characterized by strong interactions.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2011

Generalized Gibbs ensemble prediction of prethermalization plateaus and their relation to nonthermal steady states in integrable systems

A quantum many-body system which is prepared in the ground state of an integrable Hamiltonian does not directly thermalize after a sudden small parameter quench away from integrability. Rather, it will be trapped in a prethermalized state and can thermalize only at a later stage. We discuss several examples for which this prethermalized state shares some properties with the nonthermal steady state that emerges in the corresponding integrable system. These examples support the notion that nonthermal steady states in integrable systems may be viewed as prethermalized states that never decay further. Furthermore we show that prethermalization plateaus are under certain conditions correctly predicted by generalized Gibbs ensembles, which are the appropriate extension of standard statistical mechanics in the presence of many constants of motion. This establishes that the relaxation behaviors of integrable and nearly integrable systems are continuously connected and described by the same statistical theory.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2010

Optical control of the refractive index of a single atom

We experimentally demonstrate the elementary case of electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) with a single atom inside an optical cavity probed by a weak field. We observe the modification of the dispersive and absorptive properties of the atom by changing the frequency of a control light field. Moreover, a strong cooling effect has been observed at two-photon resonance, increasing the storage time of our atoms twenty-fold to about 16 seconds. Our result points towards all-optical switching with single photons.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2010

Dielectric breakdown of Mott insulators in dynamical mean-field theory

Using nonequilibrium dynamical mean-field theory, we compute the time evolution of the current in a Mott insulator after a strong electric field is turned on. We observe the formation of a quasistationary state in which the current is almost time-independent although the system is constantly excited. At moderately strong fields this state is stable for quite long times. The stationary current exhibits a threshold behavior as a function of the field, in which the threshold increases with the Coulomb interaction and vanishes as the metal-insulator transition is approached.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2010

Nonequilibrium dynamical mean-field calculations based on the non-crossing approximation and its generalizations

We solve the impurity problem which arises within nonequilibrium dynamical mean-field theory for the Hubbard model by means of a self-consistent perturbation expansion around the atomic limit. While the lowest order, known as the non-crossing approximation (NCA), is reliable only when the interaction U is much larger than the bandwidth, low-order corrections to the NCA turn out to be sufficient to reproduce numerically exact Monte Carlo results in a wide parameter range that covers the insulating phase and the metal-insulator crossover regime at not too low temperatures. As an application of the perturbative strong-coupling impurity solver we investigate the response of the double occupancy in the Mott insulating phase of the Hubbard model to a dynamical change of the interaction or the hopping, a technique which has been used as a probe of the Mott insulating state in ultracold fermionic gases.

cond-mat.str-el↗

arXiv2010

Analyzing quantum jumps of one and two atoms strongly coupled to an optical cavity

We induce quantum jumps between the hyperfine ground states of one and two Cesium atoms, strongly coupled to the mode of a high-finesse optical resonator, and analyze the resulting random telegraph signals. We identify experimental parameters to deduce the atomic spin state nondestructively from the stream of photons transmitted through the cavity, achieving a compromise between a good signal-to-noise ratio and minimal measurement-induced perturbations. In order to extract optimum information about the spin dynamics from the photon count signal, a Bayesian update formalism is employed, which yields time-dependent probabilities for the atoms to be in either hyperfine state. We discuss the effect of super-Poissonian photon number distributions caused by atomic motion.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2009

Near-adiabatic parameter changes in correlated systems: Influence of the ramp protocol on the excitation energy

We study the excitation energy for slow changes of the hopping parameter in the Falicov-Kimball model with nonequilibrium dynamical mean-field theory. The excitation energy vanishes algebraically for long ramp times with an exponent that depends on whether the ramp takes place within the metallic phase, within the insulating phase, or across the Mott transition line. For ramps within metallic or insulating phase the exponents are in agreement with a perturbative analysis for small ramps. The perturbative expression quite generally shows that the exponent depends explicitly on the spectrum of the system in the initial state and on the smoothness of the ramp protocol. This explains the qualitatively different behavior of gapless (e.g., metallic) and gapped (e.g., Mott insulating) systems. For gapped systems the asymptotic behavior of the excitation energy depends only on the ramp protocol and its decay becomes faster for smoother ramps. For gapless systems and sufficiently smooth ramps the asymptotics are ramp-independent and depend only on the intrinsic spectrum of the system. However, the intrinsic behavior is unobservable if the ramp is not smooth enough. This is relevant for ramps to small interaction in the fermionic Hubbard model, where the intrinsic cubic fall-off of the excitation energy cannot be observed for a linear ramp due to its kinks at the beginning and the end.

cond-mat.str-el↗