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Enhanced optical conductivity and many-body effects in strongly-driven photo-excited semi-metallic graphite

The excitation of quasi-particles near the extrema of the electronic band structure is a gateway to electronic phase transitions in condensed matter. In a many-body system, quasi-particle dynamics are strongly influenced by the electronic single-particle structure and have been extensively studied i...

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Autores principales: Sidiropoulos, T. P. H., Di Palo, N., Rivas, D. E., Summers, A., Severino, S., Reduzzi, M., Biegert, J.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group UK 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10654445/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37973799
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-43191-5
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author Sidiropoulos, T. P. H.
Di Palo, N.
Rivas, D. E.
Summers, A.
Severino, S.
Reduzzi, M.
Biegert, J.
author_facet Sidiropoulos, T. P. H.
Di Palo, N.
Rivas, D. E.
Summers, A.
Severino, S.
Reduzzi, M.
Biegert, J.
author_sort Sidiropoulos, T. P. H.
collection PubMed
description The excitation of quasi-particles near the extrema of the electronic band structure is a gateway to electronic phase transitions in condensed matter. In a many-body system, quasi-particle dynamics are strongly influenced by the electronic single-particle structure and have been extensively studied in the weak optical excitation regime. Yet, under strong optical excitation, where light fields coherently drive carriers, the dynamics of many-body interactions that can lead to new quantum phases remain largely unresolved. Here, we induce such a highly non-equilibrium many-body state through strong optical excitation of charge carriers near the van Hove singularity in graphite. We investigate the system’s evolution into a strongly-driven photo-excited state with attosecond soft X-ray core-level spectroscopy. We find an enhancement of the optical conductivity of nearly ten times the quantum conductivity and pinpoint it to carrier excitations in flat bands. This interaction regime is robust against carrier-carrier interaction with coherent optical phonons acting as an attractive force reminiscent of superconductivity. The strongly-driven non-equilibrium state is markedly different from the single-particle structure and macroscopic conductivity and is a consequence of the non-adiabatic many-body state.
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spelling pubmed-106544452023-11-16 Enhanced optical conductivity and many-body effects in strongly-driven photo-excited semi-metallic graphite Sidiropoulos, T. P. H. Di Palo, N. Rivas, D. E. Summers, A. Severino, S. Reduzzi, M. Biegert, J. Nat Commun Article The excitation of quasi-particles near the extrema of the electronic band structure is a gateway to electronic phase transitions in condensed matter. In a many-body system, quasi-particle dynamics are strongly influenced by the electronic single-particle structure and have been extensively studied in the weak optical excitation regime. Yet, under strong optical excitation, where light fields coherently drive carriers, the dynamics of many-body interactions that can lead to new quantum phases remain largely unresolved. Here, we induce such a highly non-equilibrium many-body state through strong optical excitation of charge carriers near the van Hove singularity in graphite. We investigate the system’s evolution into a strongly-driven photo-excited state with attosecond soft X-ray core-level spectroscopy. We find an enhancement of the optical conductivity of nearly ten times the quantum conductivity and pinpoint it to carrier excitations in flat bands. This interaction regime is robust against carrier-carrier interaction with coherent optical phonons acting as an attractive force reminiscent of superconductivity. The strongly-driven non-equilibrium state is markedly different from the single-particle structure and macroscopic conductivity and is a consequence of the non-adiabatic many-body state. Nature Publishing Group UK 2023-11-16 /pmc/articles/PMC10654445/ /pubmed/37973799 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-43191-5 Text en © The Author(s) 2023 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) .
spellingShingle Article
Sidiropoulos, T. P. H.
Di Palo, N.
Rivas, D. E.
Summers, A.
Severino, S.
Reduzzi, M.
Biegert, J.
Enhanced optical conductivity and many-body effects in strongly-driven photo-excited semi-metallic graphite
title Enhanced optical conductivity and many-body effects in strongly-driven photo-excited semi-metallic graphite
title_full Enhanced optical conductivity and many-body effects in strongly-driven photo-excited semi-metallic graphite
title_fullStr Enhanced optical conductivity and many-body effects in strongly-driven photo-excited semi-metallic graphite
title_full_unstemmed Enhanced optical conductivity and many-body effects in strongly-driven photo-excited semi-metallic graphite
title_short Enhanced optical conductivity and many-body effects in strongly-driven photo-excited semi-metallic graphite
title_sort enhanced optical conductivity and many-body effects in strongly-driven photo-excited semi-metallic graphite
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10654445/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37973799
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-43191-5
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