Theoretical framework for classification and prediction of ultrafast and strong-field phenomena in solids

Abstract

We study the characteristic energy and time scales describing the coherent electron dynamics and decoherence phenomena in solids interacting with ultrashort laser pulses. Our analysis resulted in the derivation system of dimensionless adiabaticity parameters and derivation of the non-Markovian density-matrix equations applicable on arbitrary short timescales. In our recent work [1], we systematically applied theoretical methods of adiabatic perturbation theory [2, 3] to study the problem of electron in the periodic potential driven by an external electric field. Interaction regimes of this system can be completely classified with a set of dimensionless adiabaticity parameters (see Tables 1 and 2), each of which is a ratio of two characteristic frequencies. Table 1. Characteristic frequencies and dimensionless adiabaticity parameters describing the regimes (adiabatic and diabatic limits) of laser-field interaction with periodic potentials. The parameters are proportional to the ratio of the frequencies from upper row and left column.