Optically induced delocalization of electrons bound by attractive potentials

Abstract

Within the Floquet theory of periodically driven quantum systems, we demonstrate that a circularly polarized off-resonant electromagnetic field can destroy the electron states bound by three-dimensional attractive potentials. As a consequence, the optically induced delocalization of bound electrons appears. The effect arises from the changing of topological structure of a potential landscape under a circularly polarized off-resonant electromagnetic field which turns simply connected potentials into doubly connected ones. Possible manifestations of the effect are discussed for conduction electrons in condensed-matter structures.