Nonperturbative model for optical response under intense periodic fields with application to graphene in a strong perpendicular magnetic field

Abstract

Graphene exhibits extremely strong optical nonlinearity when a strong perpendicular magnetic field is applied, the response current shows strong field dependence even for moderate light intensity, and the perturbation theory fails. We nonperturbatively calculate full optical conductivities induced by a periodic field in an equation-of-motion framework based on the Floquet theorem, with the scattering described phenomenologically. The nonlinear response at high fields is understood in terms of the dressed electronic states, or Floquet states, which is further characterized by the optical conductivity for a weak probe light field. This approach is illustrated for a magnetic field at $5$ T and a driving field with photon energy $0.05$ eV. Our results show that the perturbation theory works only for weak fields $<3$ kV/cm, confirming the extremely strong light matter interaction for Landau levels of graphene. This approach can be easily extended to the calculation of optical conductivities in other systems.