Ultrafast laser-stimulated field emission from a metal: a non-equilibrium Green's functions approach
Abstract
Ultrafast laser-assisted field emission from metallic nanotips is a promising route for generating coherent electron pulses. However, existing theoretical models often neglect many-body strong correlation effects in the emitter's electronic structure and its response to the optical field. In this work, we propose a theoretical framework based on the non-equilibrium Green's function formalism to simulate the out-of-equilibrium electron dynamics across a strongly driven matter-vacuum interface, in a one-dimensional model. Treating the tip-vacuum coupling perturbatively, we find that the interplay between strong-field emission and multi-photon emission regimes can be described in terms of a filtering of the emitter's local density of occupied states through field-dressed vacuum propagators. By including electron-electron interactions via the second-Born approximation, we show that correlation-induced modifications in the electronic structure are directly transferred to the far-field spectrum. Finally, by self-consistently solving the Dyson equation at the interface, we uncover a dynamic back-action regime driven by the optical field, characterized by a periodic polarization of the emitter, which reshapes the far-field spectrum. This shows that the non-equilibrium Green's functions approach provides a versatile framework for exploring and analyzing field emission of correlated electrons.
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BibTeX
@misc{donofrio2026ultrafast,
title = {{Ultrafast laser-stimulated field emission from a metal: a non-equilibrium Green's functions approach}},
author = {Luciano Jacopo D'Onofrio and Adolfo Avella and Martin Eckstein},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2610.13251},
eprint = {2610.13251},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.13251},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Ultrafast laser-stimulated field emission from a metal: a non-equilibrium Green's functions approach
AU - Luciano Jacopo D'Onofrio
AU - Adolfo Avella
AU - Martin Eckstein
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/09
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2610.13251
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.13251
AB - Ultrafast laser-assisted field emission from metallic nanotips is a promising route for generating coherent electron pulses. However, existing theoretical models often neglect many-body strong correlation effects in the emitter's electronic structure and its response to the optical field. In this work, we propose a theoretical framework based on the non-equilibrium Green's function formalism to simulate the out-of-equilibrium electron dynamics across a strongly driven matter-vacuum interface, in a one-dimensional model. Treating the tip-vacuum coupling perturbatively, we find that the interplay between strong-field emission and multi-photon emission regimes can be described in terms of a filtering of the emitter's local density of occupied states through field-dressed vacuum propagators. By including electron-electron interactions via the second-Born approximation, we show that correlation-induced modifications in the electronic structure are directly transferred to the far-field spectrum. Finally, by self-consistently solving the Dyson equation at the interface, we uncover a dynamic back-action regime driven by the optical field, characterized by a periodic polarization of the emitter, which reshapes the far-field spectrum. This shows that the non-equilibrium Green's functions approach provides a versatile framework for exploring and analyzing field emission of correlated electrons.
ER -