Laser pulse driven control of charge and spin order in the two-dimensional Kondo lattice

Abstract

Fast and dynamical control of quantum phases is highly desired in the application of quantum phenomena in devices. On the experimental side, ultrafast laser pulses provide an ideal platform to induce femtosecond dynamics in a variety of materials. Here, we show that a laser pulse driven heavy fermion system, can be tuned to dynamically evolve into a phase, which is not present in equilibrium. Using the state-of-the-art time-dependent variational Monte Carlo method, we perform numerical simulations of realistic laser pulses applied to the Kondo Lattice model. By tracking spin and charge degrees of freedom we identify a dynamical phase transition from a charge ordered into a metallic state, while preserving the spin order of the system. We propose to use higher harmonic generation to identify the dynamical phase transition in an ultrafast experiment.