A Hubbard exciton fluid in a photo-doped antiferromagnetic Mott insulator

Fuente: arXiv
Enregistré dans:
Détails bibliographiques
Auteurs principaux: Mehio, Omar, Li, Xinwei, Ning, Honglie, Lenarčič, Zala, Han, Yuchen, Buchhold, Michael, Porter, Zach, Laurita, Nicholas J., Wilson, Stephen D., Hsieh, David
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2025
Sujets:
Accès en ligne:
Tags: Ajouter un tag
Pas de tags, Soyez le premier à ajouter un tag!
_version_ 1866915279041200128
author Mehio, Omar
Li, Xinwei
Ning, Honglie
Lenarčič, Zala
Han, Yuchen
Buchhold, Michael
Porter, Zach
Laurita, Nicholas J.
Wilson, Stephen D.
Hsieh, David
author_facet Mehio, Omar
Li, Xinwei
Ning, Honglie
Lenarčič, Zala
Han, Yuchen
Buchhold, Michael
Porter, Zach
Laurita, Nicholas J.
Wilson, Stephen D.
Hsieh, David
contents The undoped antiferromagnetic Mott insulator naturally has one charge carrier per lattice site. When it is doped with additional carriers, they are unstable to spin fluctuation-mediated Cooper pairing as well as other unconventional types of charge, spin, and orbital current ordering. Photo-excitation can produce charge carriers in the form of empty (holons) and doubly occupied (doublons) sites that may also exhibit charge instabilities. There is evidence that antiferromagnetic correlations enhance attractive interactions between holons and doublons, which can then form bound pairs known as Hubbard excitons, and that these might self-organize into an insulating Hubbard exciton fluid. However, this out-of-equilibrium phenomenon has not been detected experimentally. Here, we report the transient formation of a Hubbard exciton fluid in the antiferromagnetic Mott insulator Sr$_{2}$IrO$_{4}$ using ultrafast terahertz conductivity. Following photo-excitation, we observe rapid spectral weight transfer from a Drude metallic response to an insulating response. The latter is characterized by a finite energy peak originating from intra-excitonic transitions, whose assignment is corroborated by our numerical simulations of an extended Hubbard model. The lifetime of the peak is short, approximately one picosecond, and scales exponentially with Mott gap size, implying extremely strong coupling to magnon modes.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2505_05566
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle A Hubbard exciton fluid in a photo-doped antiferromagnetic Mott insulator
Mehio, Omar
Li, Xinwei
Ning, Honglie
Lenarčič, Zala
Han, Yuchen
Buchhold, Michael
Porter, Zach
Laurita, Nicholas J.
Wilson, Stephen D.
Hsieh, David
Strongly Correlated Electrons
The undoped antiferromagnetic Mott insulator naturally has one charge carrier per lattice site. When it is doped with additional carriers, they are unstable to spin fluctuation-mediated Cooper pairing as well as other unconventional types of charge, spin, and orbital current ordering. Photo-excitation can produce charge carriers in the form of empty (holons) and doubly occupied (doublons) sites that may also exhibit charge instabilities. There is evidence that antiferromagnetic correlations enhance attractive interactions between holons and doublons, which can then form bound pairs known as Hubbard excitons, and that these might self-organize into an insulating Hubbard exciton fluid. However, this out-of-equilibrium phenomenon has not been detected experimentally. Here, we report the transient formation of a Hubbard exciton fluid in the antiferromagnetic Mott insulator Sr$_{2}$IrO$_{4}$ using ultrafast terahertz conductivity. Following photo-excitation, we observe rapid spectral weight transfer from a Drude metallic response to an insulating response. The latter is characterized by a finite energy peak originating from intra-excitonic transitions, whose assignment is corroborated by our numerical simulations of an extended Hubbard model. The lifetime of the peak is short, approximately one picosecond, and scales exponentially with Mott gap size, implying extremely strong coupling to magnon modes.
title A Hubbard exciton fluid in a photo-doped antiferromagnetic Mott insulator
topic Strongly Correlated Electrons
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.05566