Optical control of competing exchange interactions and coherent spin-charge coupling in two-orbital Mott insulators

In order to have a better understanding of ultrafast electrical control of exchange interactions in multi-orbital systems, we study a two-orbital Hubbard model at half filling under the action of a time-periodic electric field. Using suitable projection operators and a generalized time-dependent...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Marion M. S. Barbeau, Martin Eckstein, Mikhail I. Katsnelson, Johan H. Mentink
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: SciPost 2019-03-01
Series:SciPost Physics
Online Access:https://scipost.org/SciPostPhys.6.3.027
Description
Summary:In order to have a better understanding of ultrafast electrical control of exchange interactions in multi-orbital systems, we study a two-orbital Hubbard model at half filling under the action of a time-periodic electric field. Using suitable projection operators and a generalized time-dependent canonical transformation, we derive an effective Hamiltonian which describes two different regimes. First, for a wide range of non-resonant frequencies, we find a change of the bilinear Heisenberg exchange $J_{\textrm{ex}}$ that is analogous to the single-orbital case. Moreover we demonstrate that also the additional biquadratic exchange interaction $B_{\textrm{ex}}$ can be enhanced, reduced and even change sign depending on the electric field. Second, for special driving frequencies, we demonstrate a novel spin-charge coupling phenomenon enabling coherent transfer between spin and charge degrees of freedom of doubly ionized states. These results are confirmed by an exact time-evolution of the full two-orbital Mott-Hubbard Hamiltonian.
ISSN:2542-4653