Photoinduced insulator-metal transition and nonlinear optical response of correlated electrons – a DMFT analysis

Abstract

We investigate a photoinduced insulator-metal transition in the Falicov-Kimball model with the dynamical mean-field theory (DMFT) extended to nonequilibrium systems in periodic modulations in time. When the photon energy of the pump light is Ω≈ (U: the interaction strength), a Drude-like peak is found to grow in the optical conductivity spectrum, which is an evidence that the system is driven into a metallic state. During the transition, the band gap does not collapse, whereas the distribution function exhibits a non-monotonic behaviour away from the Fermi distribution. This indicates that the transition cannot be accounted for by heating effects, but creation of photo-carriers is responsible.