Many-body Correlation Effects in the Ultrafast Nonlinear Optical Response of Confined Fermi Seas

Abstract

The dynamics of electrons and atoms interacting with intense and ultrashort optical pulses presents an important problem in physics that cuts across different materials such as semiconductors and metals. The currently available laser pulses, as short as 5 fs, provide a time resolution shorter than the dephasing and relaxation times in many materials. This allows for a systematic study of many-body effects using nonlinear optical spectroscopy. In this review article, we discuss the role of Coulomb correlations in the ultrafast dynamics of modulation-doped quantum wells and metal nanoparticles. We focus in particular on the manifestations of non-Markovian memory effects induced by strong electron-hole and electron-plasmon correlations.