Nonequilibrium dynamics of suppression, revival, and loss of charge order in a laser pumped electron-phonon system

Abstract

An electron-phonon system at commensurate filling often displays charge order (CO) in the ground state. Such a system subject to a laser pulse shows a wide variety of behaviour. A weak pulse sets up low amplitude oscillations in the order parameter, with slow decay to a slightly suppressed value. A strong pulse leads to the destruction of the charge order with the order parameter showing rapid, oscillatory, decay to zero. The regime in between, separating the weak pulse CO sustained state from the strong pulse CO destroyed state, shows complex dynamics characterised by multiple, pulse strength dependent, time scales. It involves an initial rapid decay of the order parameter, followed by a low amplitude quiescent state, and the power-law rise to a steady-state over a timescale $\tau_{cr}$. We provide a complete characterisation of the dynamics in this nonequilibrium problem for varying electron-phonon coupling and pulse strength, examine the possibility of an effective "thermal" description of the long time state, and present results on the multiple insulator-metal transitions that show up.