High-harmonic spectroscopy of coherent lattice dynamics in graphene

Abstract

High-harmonic spectroscopy of solids is a powerful tool, which provides access to both electronic structure and ultrafast electronic response of solids, from their band structure and density of states to phase transitions, including the emergence of the topological edge states, to the PetaHertz electronic response. However, in spite of these successes, high-harmonic spectroscopy has hardly been applied to analyze the role of coherent femtosecond lattice vibrations in the attosecond electronic response. Here we study coherent phonon excitations in monolayer graphene to show how high-harmonic spectroscopy can be used to detect the influence of coherent lattice dynamics, particularly longitudinal and transverse optical phonon modes, on the electronic response. Coherent excitation of the in-plane phonon modes results in the appearance of sidebands in the spectrum of the emitted harmonic radiation. We show that the spectral positions and the polarization of the sideband emission offer a sensitive probe of the dynamical symmetries associated with the excited phonon modes. Our work brings the key advantage of high-harmonic spectroscopy---the combination of subfemtosecond to tens of femtoseconds temporal resolution---to the problem of probing phonon-driven electronic response and its dependence on the dynamical symmetries in solids.