Sub-cycle doublon-holon dynamics in one-dimensional Mott insulators revealed by two-color high-harmonic spectroscopy

@misc{hatch2026subcycle,
  title = {{Sub-cycle doublon-holon dynamics in one-dimensional Mott insulators revealed by two-color high-harmonic spectroscopy}},
  author = {Lance Hatch and Aditya Verma and Eric Schultz and Hanjun Yang and Priscila Rosa and Genda Gu and Igor Zaliznyak and Giulio Vampa and Laimei Nie and Hanzhe Liu},
  howpublished = {arXiv},
  year = {2026},
  month = sep,
  doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2609.11858},
  eprint = {2609.11858},
  archivePrefix = {arXiv},
  url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.11858},
}

TY  - UNPB
TI  - Sub-cycle doublon-holon dynamics in one-dimensional Mott insulators revealed by two-color high-harmonic spectroscopy
AU  - Lance Hatch
AU  - Aditya Verma
AU  - Eric Schultz
AU  - Hanjun Yang
AU  - Priscila Rosa
AU  - Genda Gu
AU  - Igor Zaliznyak
AU  - Giulio Vampa
AU  - Laimei Nie
AU  - Hanzhe Liu
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/09/10
PB  - arXiv
DO  - 10.48550/arxiv.2609.11858
UR  - https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.11858
AB  - Solid-state high-harmonic spectroscopy is becoming an emerging tool for probing nonequilibrium many-body dynamics. Yet, direct measurements of strongly driven, sub-optical-cycle dynamics in correlated materials during high-harmonic emission remain largely unexplored. Here, we measure high-harmonic emission chirp in a prototypical one-dimensional Mott insulator, which encodes strongly driven doublon-holon dynamics at sub-optical-cycle timescales. We observe a positive chirp for above band gap harmonics, indicating that high harmonics are dominated by doublon-holon recombinations. We further show a harmonic order-dependent dephasing, which can be understood through different doublon-holon excursion distances associated with each harmonic. These results reveal coherent doublon-holon dynamics and their ultrafast dephasing in Mott insulators, which is relevant to other nonequilibrium light-induced phenomena, such as Floquet engineering.
ER  -