Dynamical unbinding transition in a periodically driven Mott insulator

Phys Rev Lett. 2010 Jun 4;104(22):220402. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.104.220402. Epub 2010 Jun 1.

Abstract

We study the double occupancy in a fermionic Mott insulator at half filling generated via a dynamical periodic modulation of the hopping amplitude. Tuning the modulation amplitude, we describe a crossover in the nature of doublon-holon excitations from a Fermi golden rule regime to damped Rabi oscillations. The decay time of excited states diverges at a critical modulation strength, signaling the transition to a dynamically bound nonequilibrium state of doublon-holon pairs. A setup using a fermionic quantum gas should allow the study of the critical exponents.