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Mikhail Malakhov

Publications and source records attributed to Mikhail Malakhov.

6 recordsLinked to original sources

Quantum valley pseudospin controlled by strain

Valleytronics, as an alternative to traditional electronics or spintronics, is based on the encoding of quantum information in pseudospin valley quantum numbers, rather than in charge or spin states. A key ingredient is the (optical) manipulation of valley states before loss of coherence, which can be as fast as 100 femtoseconds. Previous works have shown the possibility of valley state manipulation using external fields. Here we propose uniaxial strain as a more flexible and robust scheme to manipulate the valley state through the breaking of the crystal symmetry and the concomitant lifting of the degeneracy of the 1s exciton energy. Our theory is corroborated by state-of-the-art numerical simulations in monolayer hBN and shows the possibility to control valley pseudospin at the attosecond time scale.

cond-mat.mes-hall

Topological phase transitions via attosecond x-ray absorption spectroscopy

We present a numerical experiment that demonstrates the possibility to capture topological phase transitions via an x-ray absorption spectroscopy scheme. We consider a Chern insulator whose topological phase is tuned via a second-order hopping. We perform time-dynamics simulations of the out-of-equilibrium laser-driven electron motion that enables us to model a realistic attosecond spectroscopy scheme. In particular, we use an ultrafast scheme with a circularly polarized IR pump pulse and an attosecond x-ray probe pulse. A laser-induced dichroism-type spectrum shows a clear signature of the topological phase transition. We are able to connect these signatures with the Berry structure of the system. This work extend the applications of attosecond absorption spectroscopy to systems presenting a non-trivial topological phase.

physics.optics

Exciton migration in two-dimensional materials

Excitons play an essential role in the optical response of two-dimensional materials. These are bound states showing up in the band gaps of many-body systems and are conceived as quasiparticles formed by an electron and a hole. By performing real-time simulations in hBN, we show that an ultrashort (few-fs) UV pulse can produce a coherent superposition of excitonic states that induces an oscillatory motion of electrons and holes between different valleys in reciprocal space, leading to a sizeable exciton migration in real space. We also show that an ultrafast spectroscopy scheme based on the absorption of an attosecond pulse in combination with the UV pulse can be used to read out the laser-induced coherences, hence to extract the characteristic time for exciton migration. This work opens the door towards ultrafast electronics and valleytronics adding time as a control knob and exploiting electron coherence at the early times of excitation.

physics.optics

Formation, stability, and highly nonlinear optical response of excitons to intense light fields interacting with two-dimensional materials

Excitons play a key role in the linear optical response of 2D materials. However, their significance in the highly nonlinear optical response to intense mid-infrared light has often been overlooked. Using hBN as a prototypical example, we theoretically demonstrate that excitons play a major role in this process. Specifically, we illustrate their formation and stability in intense low-frequency fields, where field strengths surpass the Coulomb field binding the electron-hole pair in the exciton. Additionally, we establish a parallelism between these results and the already-known physics of Rydberg states using an atomic model. Finally, we propose an experimental setup to test the effect of excitons in the nonlinear optical response

physics.optics

A theoretical approach for electron dynamics and ultrafast spectroscopy

In this manuscript we present a theoretical framework and its numerical implementation to simulate the out-of-equilibrium electron dynamics induced by the interaction of ultrashort laser pulses in condensed-matter systems. Our approach is based on evolving in real-time the density matrix of the system in reciprocal space. It considers excitonic and non-perturbative light-matter interactions. We show some relevant examples that illustrate the efficiency and flexibility of the approach to describe realistic ultrafast spectroscopy experiments. Our approach is suitable for modeling the promising and emerging ultrafast studies at the attosecond time scale that aim at capturing the electron dynamics and the dynamical electron-electron correlations via X-ray absorption spectroscopy.

physics.optics

Non-equilibrium $d-$ wave pair density wave order parameter in superconducting cuprates

We investigate the nonequilibrium pair density wave order parameter in a simple microscopic model with the ground state $d-$ wave spatially uniform superconductivity. After pushing the system out of equilibrium by a short-time induced order parameter, the system can exhibit robust free nondecaying oscillations of nonuniform superconducting order. In the weak nonequilibrium regime, the frequency of these oscillations is about $2Δ/\hbar$ and the amplitude can be explained qualitatively by features of equilibrium free energy. In case when the system was taken far from equilibrium, it transits to a non-linear regime where even metastable coexistence of $d-$ wave superconducting and pair density wave gaps are possible.

cond-mat.supr-con